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THE 



CELEBRATION 



TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE INCORPORATION 

OP THE / 

TOWN OF IPSWICH 

MASSACHUSETTS 

August 16, 1884 



BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 

1884 
t 



Sanibcrsttg Press : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambkidge. 






TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

PAGE 

PKOCEIDrNGS AT THE ANNUAL ToWN-MeETING 3 

Proceedings at the Adjoukned Town-Meeting 4 

Appointment of Sub-committees, etc 4 

The Procession " 

Order of Exercises at the Tent 8 

EXERCISES AT THE TENT. 

Address of Hon. George Haskell, President of the Day . 9 

Original Hymn by the Rev. J. P. Cowles 12 

Prayer by the Rev. Temple Cutler 13 

Poem by the Rev. J. 0. Knowles, D.D 16 

Historical Address by the Rev. John C Kimball .... 25 

Poem, "Mother Ipswich" ^1 

Original Hymn by the Rev. J. O. Knowles, D.D 64 



THE DINNER. 

Remarks of the President 67 

Remarks of the Toast-master, the Rev. T. Frank "Waters . 68 

Address of Governor Robinson 69 

Letter from the Hon. Robert C Winthrop 75 

Address of the Hon. Leverett Saltonstall 76 

Address op the Rev. E. B. Palmer 80 

Address of Dr. Daniel Denison Slade 84 

Remarks of the Hon. C. A. Sayward 87 



VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Remarks or Richakd S. Spoffoud, Esq 90 

Poem by Harkiet Peescott Spoffokd 90 

Remarks of Major Ben : Perley Poore 93 

Remarks of the Rev. George Leeds, D.D 95 

Letter from the Poet Whittier 98 

Address of the Hon. George B. Loring 99 

Address of R. H. Manning, Esq 108 

Remarks of the Rev. John C. Kimball 113 

Remarks of the Hon. Eben E. Stone 114 

Address of Colonel Luther Caldwell 118 

Remarks of the Rev. R. S. Rust 120 

Address op Mr. Erancis R. A.ppleton 121 

Letter from the Mayor of Ipswich, England 123 

Telegram from Ipswich, England 124 

Address of the Hon. S. H. Phillips 124 

Telegram to Ipswich, England 130 

Closing Exercise 131 



SELECTIONS EROM CORRESPONDENCE. 

Letter from the Hon. James G. Blaine 133 

Letter from the Hon. W. W. Dudley ........ 133 

Letter from Rev. Edmund E. Slafter. ........ 134 

Letter from Thomas Morong, Esq 135 

Letter from S. L. Caldwell, Esq. 135 

Letter from the Hon. Charles Levi Woodbury 137 



List of Invited Guests 139 

The Choir 145 

Description of Heliotypes 147 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



John Winturop, Jr Frontispiece 

The WiNTHKOP-BuRNnAM House Next to Frontispiece 

Public Library, Post Office, and Methodist Church ... 5 

First Church, Soldiers' Monument, and Green 8 

South Chukch and Green 8 

Ipswich, FROii Heartbreak Hill 25 

View from Green-street Bridge 67 

The Howard House 67 

Mr. Richard Saltonstall's House, built in 1635 76 

Meeting-Houses 80 

Colonel Nathaniel Wade and Colonel Joseph Hodgkins . . 88 

The Manning School 109 

Rev. Thomas Cobbett's House 118 

The Dodge House 118 

Choate Bridge, built 1764 148 




,J^-I^^»^ 



GOVERNOR JOHN WINTHROP THE YOUNGER. 



V.tV\0^~<V\ ?»,«AV\4t ^0., 405>An 



JOHN WINTHROP, JR. 
(Frontispiece.) 

John Winthrop, Jr., eldest son of the Governor of Massachu- 
setts, born Feb. 12, 1G06, was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, 
and a barrister of the Inner Temple. In 1631 he followed his 
father to I^ew England, founded Ipswich, Mass., in 1632, was 
commissioned Governor of "Connecticut Plantation" in 1635, 
founded New London in 1645, was elected Governor of Connecti- 
cut in 1657, and obtained from the crown in 1661 the charter 
uniting the Connecticut and New Haven Colonies, continuing gov- 
ernor for nearly seventeen years. His public duties obliged him 
repeatedly to visit England, and during his residence there he 
became widely known as an accomplished scholar ; Avas one of the 
early members of the Koyal Society, and the friend and correspond- 
ent of the leading natural philosophers of that period. He also 
took a very active interest in the study of medicine, and practised 
extensively and gratuitously among his New England neighbors. 
The journal of Governor Winthrop the elder mentions that his son 
John possessed in Boston, in 1640, a library of more than a thou- 
sand volumes. Some three hundred of these books can still be 
identified, and bear testimony to the learning and broad intellec- 
tual tastes of their original possessor. He died in Boston, April 5, 
1676, aged seventy, and was buried with his father in King's 
Chapel graveyard. By his first wife (his cousin Martha Fones) 
he left no issue. By his second wife (Elizabeth, daughter of 
Edmund Reade of Wickford County, Essex, and step-daughter of 
the celebrated Hugh Peter) he left two sons, Fitz-John and Wait, 
and five daughters, — Elizabeth, wife of Rev. Antipas Newman, and 
afterward of Zerubbabel Endicott ; Lucy, wife of Major Edward 
Palmes ; Margaret, wife of John Curwin ; Martha, wife of Richard 
Wharton ; and Anne, second wife of Judge John Ricliards. 

His first wife was buried in Ipswich, and his eldest son, Fitz- 
John Winthrop, afterwards Governor of Connecticut, was born 
there. — From the Winthrop Papers. Collections of the Massachu- 
setts Historical Society. 



THE WINTHROP-BURNHAM HOUSE. 

This house is on the south side of the river, on the Essex road, 
and according to tradition was built by John Winthrop, Jr., in 1633. 
Here he lived with his family until he removed to Connecticut, 
in 1635. Afterwards the place came into the possession of the 
Burnhams, and continued in that family for more than two hundred 
years. 



CELEBRATION 



TWO HUXDEED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVEESARY 



THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 



INTRODUCTION. 



AT the Annual Town-Meeting, held m the Town 
Hall, Monday, March 5, 1883, the Hon. 
Charles A. Sayward, moderator, called the atten- 
tion of the meeting to the fact that the two hmi- 
dred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation 
of the town would occur on the IGth of August, 
1884, and suggested that measures should be 
adopted for its proper celebration. The suggestion 
was favorably received; and, upon motion of the 
Hon. Frederic Willcomb, it was voted that a com- 
mittee to take the matter in charge should be named 
by the moderator. He appointed — 



Hon. Frederic Willcomb, 
Mr. Joseph Ross, 
Mr. Thomas H. Lord, 
Mr. G. W. Coburn, 



Mr. Philip E. Clarke, 
Mr. George E. Farley, 
Mr. D. Fuller Appleton, 
Mr. John Heard, 



who were approved by the meeting ; and, upon fur- 
ther motion of Mr. Willcomb, the moderator was 
added to the number. 

The Committee shortly after organized, electing 
Hon. C. A. Sayward chairman, and Mr. George E. 
Farley secretary. 



4 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

At an adjourned town-meeting, held Monday, 
April 7, 1884, the Committee requested that the 
sum of one thousand dollars should be appropriated 
for the expenses of the occasion. The sanction of 
the State Legislature having been obtained, the 
appropriation was promptly voted. It was further 
voted that the selectmen of the town, Mr. Nathaniel 
R. Faeley, chairman, Col. Nathaniel Shatswell, 
and Mr. Albert S. Brown, should be joined to 
the committee. 

From this time forward the Committee held fre- 
quent meetings, and arranged sub-committees to 
attend to various matters of detail. They invited 
the Hon. George Haskell to assume the duties 
of president of the day, the Rev. John C. Kimball 
to deliver the oration, and the Rev. T. Frank 
Waters to act as toast-master. Col. Nathaniel 
Shatswell was appointed chief marshal. 

It was originally intended that the exercises should 
be held in the Town Hall ; but, as it was feared this 
would be insufficient to accommodate the number 
expected, a tent was erected for the purpose on the 
green near the First Church. Another tent was 
erected for the dinner, which was served in a very 
handsome manner by Mr. Dooling from Boston. 
The ladies of Ipswich contributed the flowers. The 
number seated at dinner was about one thousand, 
the invited guests occupying two tables raised above 
the others, at one of which presided the president 
of the day, the Hon. George Haskell, and at the 
other, the chairman of the committee, the Hon. C. 



INTRODUCTION. 



A. Sayward. Music was furnished by the Germania 
Band from Boston, and by the Lynn Brass Band. 
The chorus, of over fifty voices, was under the di- 
rection of Mr. Arthur S. Kimball, a native of 
Ipswich, but now of Oberlin, Ohio. 

The Town Hall, Post Otfice, Odd Fellows' Hall, 
Manning School, and Public Library, and the resi- 
dences of the townspeople generally, were handsome- 
ly decorated, and the town altogether presented a 
most attractive appearance. The weather was all 
that could be desired. 

Salutes of thirty-eight guns each were fired by 
Battery C, Light Artillery, of Lynn, from Town 
Hill, at sunrise, noon, and sunset. A brilliant dis- 
play of fireworks in the evening, accompanied by 
music from the bands, closed the proceedings of the 

The Committee charged with this compilation 
desire to express their thanks to Mr. PvOBERT C. 
WiNTHROP, Jr., of Boston, and to Mr. Robert Win- 
THROP of New York, for their kind aid. The last- 
named gentleman is the owner of the original 
portrait from which the heliotype that fronts this 
volume was taken. 

They also thank the Rev. Augustine Caldwell 
and Mr. Arthur W. Dow, proprietors of the Ipswich 
Antiquarian Papers, for the prints of the old Ipswich 
churches, and of Colonels Wade and Hodgkins. 

They further offer their grateful acknowledgments 
to Dr. Henry Wheatland, President of the Essex 
Institute, for much valuable assistance. 



THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 



THE PROCESSION. 



At nine a.m., upon the arrival of liis Excellency 
tlie Governor, and Staff, the Lieutenant-Governor, 
and many of the invited guests, the procession was 
formed at the Eastern Railroad Station as follows: — 

Chief Marshal, 
Col. Nathaniel Shatswell. 

Chief of Staff, Charles W. Bamford. 



Aids, 



Walter E. Lord. 
Lyman H. Daniels. 
Fred. G. Ross. 
Albert P. Jordan. 
Edward F. Brown. 
Allan W. Brown. 
William A. Stone. 
Curtis Damon. 



Charles Haskell. 
Elisha N. Brown. 
Samuel G. Brackett. 
Charles W. Blake. 
AVayland W. Waite. 
Lawrence McKay. 
Daniel B. Burnham. 
John I. Sullivan. 



Willard F. Kinsman. 

Germania Band of Boston, 25 pieces. 

General Appleton Post, 128, Grand Army of the Republic, 100 men. 
Commander, Luther Wait. 

John D. Billings and Staff, Department Commander Grand Army of 
the Republic. 

O. H. P. Sargent Post, 152, of Essex, 40 men. Commander, 
Timothy Andrews. 

Agawam Lodge, 52 I. O. 0. F., 56 men. Noble Grand, Augustine H. 
Ploufp : Marshal, William P. Ross. 

Ipswich Mutual Benefit Society, 50 men. Charles Olsen, President; 
Nathaniel L. Clark, Conductor. 

Lynn Brass Band, 25 pieces, iinder Drum Major Colcord. 

Stlvanus F. Canney, Chief Engineer Ipswich Fire Departnent. 

Assistants : Edward W. Choate, Moses Spiller, Erastus 
Clarke, Jr. 



THE mOCESSIOX. 7 

Marblehead Drum Corps. 

Warren Engine and Hose Company, 40 men. George P. Smith, 
Foreman. 

Barnicoat Engine Company, 50 men. Stephen Baker, Foremau. 
Danvers Drum Corps. 

Sutton Hook and Ladder Company, 40 men. Nathaniel Archer, 

Foreman. 

"Washington Blues, in barge. 

Carriage with four horses, containing his Excellency Governor RoBlNSON, 

Adjutant-General S. Daltox, and Nathaniel R. Farley, 

Chairman Ipswich Selectmen. 

Carriage containing Lieutenant-Governor Ames and members of the 
Governor's Staff. 

Carriages containing Veterans of the G. A. R., Veteran Odd Fellows, 
Veteran Soldiers and Sailors, Survivors of the Denison 
Light Infantry, and Thomas Smith, only sur- 
vivor in Ipswich of the war of 1812. 

Carriage containing Rev. John C. Kimball, orator of the day, 
and JSIrs. Kimball. 

Carriage containing old Ipswich townsmen : Mr. Ezeiciel PeabodT, 

aged 96 ; Mr. Jeremiah S. Perkins, aged 87, and :\Ir. I. 

Pclsifer (now of Salem). 

Carriages with Selectmen and Town Officers of Ipswich. 
Carriages with invited guests. 



ROUTE OF THE PROCESSION. 

Market to Depot Square; countermarch, — Market to Central Street, 
Central to Mineral, j\lineral to Gravel, Gravel to High, up High Street 
to Harris Square ; countermarch, —down High to East Street, East to 
Cross Street, Cross to Summer Street, Summer to Water Street, Water 
to Green Street, Green to Cross Street, Cross to Summer Street, Sum- 
mer to Main Street, Main to Soldier's Monument, thence by Green to 
County Street, Countvto School Street, to Linden Street, to South Mam 
Street, through South J^Iain to the tent appropriated to the exercises of 
the day, where it was dismissed. 



ORDER OF EXERCISES AT THE TENT. 



I. MUSIC. 
GERMANIA BAND. 



II. INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 

HON. GEORGE HASKELL, President of the Day. 



III. READING OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

(Psalms XCIX. and C.) 

REV. CHARLES T. JOHNSON. 



IV. ORIGINAL HYMN. 

Tune, " Meribah." 
REV. J. P. COWLES. 



V. PRAYER. 
REV. TEMPLE CUTLER. 



VI. POEM. 
JIRS. HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 



VII. ANTHEM: "PRAISE THE LORD." 



VIII. ADDRESS. 
REV. JOHN C. KIMBALL. 



IX. MUSIC. 
LYNN BRASS B.AND. 



X. POEM: "MOTHER IPSWICH." 

By one of EER GRANDCniLDREN. 

READ BY ROLAND COTTON SMITH. 



XI. ORIGINAL HYMN. 

Tune, " St. Ann." 
REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D. 



XII. DOXOLOGY. 

To BE SUNG BY THE AUDIENCE, ACCOMPAMED BY THE BAN©. 



XIII. BENEDICTION. 



Note. — It will be observed that the exercises did not exactly follow the programme. 



EXERCISES AT THE TENT. 



^ I "HE exercises at the tent began with music by 
-'- the Geemaxia Baxd, after which the Presi- 
dent of the Day made the following introductory 
address : — 

ADDRESS OF HON. GEORGE HASKELL, 

PRESIDENT OF THE DAY. 

Ladies and Gentlemex, — Two liundred and fifty years 
ago tills day, the Court of Assistants, -whicli at tha,t time con- 
stituted the government of the Massachusetts Colony, passed 
an order that " Agawam shall be called Ipswitch ; " and from 
that date and event we reckon our existence as a town. We 
have met to-day, in commemoration of that event, to refresh 
and strengthen the memory of the circumstances and the 
events attending the settlement of tlie town, and of the 
character and work of the men engaged in that undertaking. 
The beauty of this location and the fertility of the soil 
allured settlers here several years before the act of incorpo- 
ration, and before any grant of the land was made or author- 
ized ; for we find in the colonial records, as early as 1630, 
— on the 7th of September, tlie same day on which it was 
ordered that " Trimountain should be called Boston," — the 
Court of Assistants also issued an order " that a warrant 
shall be presently sent to Agawam to command those that 
are planted there forthwith to come away." Who were then 
planted here, and whether they left or not, are matters of 



10 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

uncertainty ; but, a few years later, a number of the most 
prominent men of the Colony came to this town to reside. 
They had grants of land — house-lots, town-lots, as they were 
called — for tlie erection of residences, planting-lots of about 
six acres near by, and a larger extent of agricultural or farm- 
ing laud farther away. Several of them built residences in 
the town ; but, after the lapse of a few years, some of them 
removed from the town, and sold their lauds here. A few, 
however, who moved away, retained their lands, which have 
descended to some branch of their families, and are held 
to-day, in many instances, by the descendants of the first 
grantee. Those who remained here gave their attention to 
the cultivation of the soil, and agriculture became, and for 
two hundred years continued to be, the principal business of 
the town. These early settlers were men of good education, 
for that period. They knew the value of education, and at 
once provided for the instruction of their children. They 
understood their rights, and were among the first in the 
country to assert those rights against the encroachments of 
the crown. They comprehended their duties as citizens, and 
no interest of church or town suffered by their neglect. They 
recognized their obligations to a rightful government, and met 
all the requisitions upon them for men and means which the 
exigencies of the Colony often made necessary. Living upon 
their lands, they were in a measure secluded from much of the 
rest of the busy world ; but upon those estates they enjoyed 
all the highest blessings of human life, — health, peace, plenty, 
and contentment. But such quiet lives were not adapted to 
all times and to all temperaments ; and many young men of 
every generation, natives of the town, moved away in quest 
of fame or fortune. We have no reason to complain of their 
departure. They generally bore with them cultivated intel- 
lects and good morals ; and many of them became centres of 
widespread and beneficial influence in their new homes, and 
thus brought honor upon their native town. The people of 
this town have always felt much interest in those fiunilies 
that have moved from them, and have taken pride in the 



ADDRESS OF HON. GEORGE HASKELL. 11 

prominence Uiey have attained in the business and profes- 
sional circles of larger communities ; and we are glad, very 
glad, to meet on this occasion representatives of so many 
of those families that moved from our borders in earlier or in 
later times. We trust they will find in the incidents of this 
clay — in what they shall see and hear of the town, its origin 
and progress, its people, its natural beauties and institutions — 
something to increase and strengthen their interest in the 
town, in its history and future. It is one of the peculiar 
advantages of a celebration of this kind, that it calls these 
wandeieis home ; that it strengthens and quickens the mem- 
ories that cluster around the home of their childhood ; that 
it excites an interest in the localities and scenes in which 
their ancestors lived and labored, and strengthens their affec- 
tion for their native laud. Love of home begets love of 
country ; and it is well, by such a celebration as this, to 
strengthen the attachment of every son and daughter of the 
land to their old ancestral home ; so that, wlierever they may 
wander over the earth, they will turn to it with fond recollec- 
tion, and come back to it in after-life to revive the memories 
of the past, and to renew the associations and ties of their 
childhood and youth. 

During the long existence of the town, and since many of 
these families moved from her borders, there have, of course, 
been some changes here; but much remains as it was in 
the times of our ancestors. Enough remains unchanged, we 
think, to make the town interesting to their descendants. 
]\lany of these dwellings they built and occupied. The fields 
they planted and tilled are all around us. Their graves are 
here. Sires and sons of successive generations rest on yon- 
der hillside. We walk to-day in the paths our fathers trod; 
we drink at the fountains from which they drank ; we gather 
around the hearthstones which they laid; and Nature here 
wears her primitive beauty still, unspoiled by the hands of 
man. From these surrounding hilltops we have the same 
grand and beautiful prospect which they beheld: on one 
side the ocean, always sublinie, the islands, the long line of 



12 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

shore, and the distant headlands ; on the other side a wide 
and varied prospect of hill and valley, field and forest, and 
the little streams glistening among the overhanging brandies 
and tall groves, — a view ^^•hicll must have filled their hearts 
with gladness when they first looked upon it as their land of 
promise, and which is spread before our sight to-day as our 
inheritance from them. 

Your attention is now asked to the reading of select 
portions of Scripture by the Eev. Ciiaeles T. Johnson, 
of this town. 

Rev. Mr. Joms^so^f read Psalms XCTX. and C. 

President Haskell. — An original lijmn, by Rev. 
J. P. CowLES of this town, will now be suncr. 

The hymn was sung to the tune of " Meribah," 
and was as follows : — 

AN ORIGINAL HYMN. 

I LOVE the laud tbat gave me Lirtli : 
What loveHer spot can be on earth 

Thau where I first drew breath 1 
I love the ashea of my sires ; 
Fresh will I keep their altar-fires 

Until I sleep in death. 

Hail, solemn Puritanic shore ! 
All hail, thine everlasting roar 

Of deep Atlantic born ! 
Can other rock with that compete. 
Where stepped those blessed Pilgrim feet 

That cold December morn 1 

Henceforth thy ragged rocks are fair, 
New England, yea, beyond compare ; 

One sanctifies them all : 
Thy hills are crowned with yeomen bold ; 
Their thews of strength thy rights enfold 

As with a granite Avail. 



PKAYEE BY REV. TEMPLE CUTLER. 13 

This is our cradle, licre our graves : 
Where is tlie recreant soul that craves 

A Paris, or a liome 1 
Brave Peregrine ! the first that said, 
" Here I was christened, here I wed, 

And this shall he my home." 

Young star of empire, liold thy way ; 
None talk to thee of cold decay, 

Or calculate thine age; 
None speculate with curious eyes 
And base delight on thy demise, 

Or spell thy latest page. 

Foes of my country, think, beware ! 
Touch not the ark beloved where 

Her pledge of union lies : 
Her band of stars shall not decline, 
Her heroes never cease to shine 

Clear in the upper skies. 

President Haskell. — Prayer will now be offered 
by the Rev. Temple Cutler of Essex. 

The Rev. Temple Cutler invoked "the divine bless- 
ing as follows : — 

PRAYER. 

TiiOU whose name is Jeliovah, who alone art most high 
over all the earth, who wast the God of our fathers, and 
didst promise unto them to be a God unto their children and 
children's children, until the remotest generations, to them 
that fear Thee and keep Thy commandments, we desire to 
come before Thee with gratitude fur all Thy infinite love and 
mercy shown toward us, and in humble penitence for our 
many transgressions. We blush, God, at the remembrance 
of the sins that have been committed in the sight of such 
infinite goodness ; but we rejoice at the gracious word that 
comes from Thee, through the mouth of Thy prophet, that. 



14 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

tliougli our sins be as scarlet, Thou canst make them white 
as snow. We beseech Thee, Lord, to wash us thoroughly 
from our iniquity, and to cleanse us from our sins ; for we 
acknowledge our transgression, and our sin is before Thee. 
Be Thou merciful unto our unrighteousness ; and our sins and 
our iniquities do Thou remember no more. Through Jesiis 
Christ our Lord. 

We render thanks unto Thee, God, for those gracious 
providences which have crowned our day witli those civil 
and religious privileges which we enjoy ; for a government 
founded upon the eternal principle of righteousness and 
truth as discovered in thy Holy Word; for the faithful ad- 
ministration of the laws of our land, whereby are secured 
unto us all those individual privileges consistent with tlie 
association of free, independent agents in a body politic ; for 
the spirit of intelligence that pervades the masses of our 
people ; for our schools and colleges, and all our seminaries 
of learning ; for our churches and the faithful ministration 
of all the holy offices of our blessed religion. AVe thank 
Thee that Thou didst endow the fathers with that spirit of 
wisdom that enabled them to lay firm and deep the founda- 
tions of all these inestimable blessings. 

We beseech Thee, Lord, that Thou wilt grant unto us 
grace that we may discharge the high trusts worthily that 
have been transmitted unto us. Standing here to-day upon 
this ground hallowed by the footsteps of our Puritan Fatliers, 
we pray that Thou wilt inspire us with a portion of their 
heroism, that we may meet the conflict that awaits us in the 
advancing of those principles which they so clearly enunci- 
ated and so firmly established. God, may not these insti- 
tutions which we love so dearly pass into unworthy hands ! 
Grant, we beseech Thee, our Father, that we may transmit 
them to our children, perfected and established by the wis- 
dom which Thou shall grant unto us. 

We beseech Thee, Lord, that Thou wilt give a special 
blessing upon all the exercises of this day, — this day when 
we look back over a quarter of a thousand years of history. 



PRAYER BY REV. TEMPLE CUTLER. 15 

and rehearse the deeds of our fathers. We thank Thee, 
Lord, for the holy men, and good men, and true men, that 
have hiid the foundations of this government in the days 
gone by. We thank Thee for all that we enjoy through 
them. We pray, heavenly Father, tluit Tliy Llessing may 
rest upon this town, upon all the descendants of those Pil- 
grim Fathers. We thank Thee, Lord, for these schools 
that have been here established, and these seminaries, from 
which have gone forth, not only the sons and daughters of 
Ipswich, but the sons and daughters of other towns, to exert 
their influence upon the world, and to establish firmly the 
great principles of truth and liberty as they have received 
them by these firesides and in these schools. 

O Lord, now we beseech Thee that Thou wilt bless this 
gathering. Bless every utterance that may be made here. 
Be with our servant who shall speak unto us of the history 
of this town. We beseech Thee that Thy blessing shall rest 
upon every word that sliall be spoken in this gathering. 
Wilt Thou remember, and kindly wilt Thou regard, those 
friends and neighbors who have come here this day to cele- 
brate this two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founda- 
tion of this town. Lord, grant that we may go down from 
this place with our hearts inspired with a holy zeal, with 
firm and true patriotism, with a holy ambition and a strong 
endeavor to make our lives useful, and that they may be 
full of service for the generations which are to come, and 
may rise up and call us blessed, as we call the fathers blessed 
who have gone before us. And the glory we will give to Thee, 
the Father, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen. 

President Haskell, — The next item on the pro- 
gramme — a poem by Mrs, LLvrriet Prescott Spof- 
FORD — will be deferred until afternoon. A poem 
will now be read by the Rev. J. 0. Knowles, D.D. 



16 THE TOWS OF IPSWICH. 



POEM. 

IN other climes and other days 
The poets in their tuneful lays 
Have sung their native country's praise 

Eight royally, 
And moved the men of after-years 
To deeds heroic, or to tears ; 
And made them, spite of foes or fears, 
Act loyally. 

Their living words have conquered fate, 
And made the deeds of all the great 
The proudest trophies of the State, 

And richest dower; 
And made the spots forever bright 
Where heroes dared to do the right, 
And faced the wrong, though mailed in might 

And kingly power. 



In rhythmic lines we see again 
The beauties of the mountain glen. 
Or walk within the gloomy fen 

With Scotland's bard. 
Or wander on its heath plains wide. 
Or cleave Loch Levin's tawny tide, 
Or climb Ben Nevis' rocky side 

By tempests scarred. 



Again the Greeks rejoice to see 
The glimmer of the welcome sea ; 
Again at old Thermopjdse 
The Spartan braves 



POEM BY REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D. 17 

Roll back the swarms of Xerxes' liost, 
Humble the proud iuvader's boast, 
And glorify their native coast 
With patriot graves. 



But time would fail the tale to tell 
Of running stream or barren fell, 
Of mountain-pass or shady dell 

Sacred in song, 
Of Swiss or Saxon, Hun or Celt, 
Whose souls the thrill of freedom felt. 
That nerved their sturdy arms that dealt 

Death-blows to wrong. 



Scarce humbler men we sing to-day. 
Scarce humbler deeds these lines display, 
Than those of other bards the lay 

In ages past ; 
For every test applied to men 
To measure greatness now or then 
Declares our fathers to have been 

Of merit vast. 



Small need is there our limping verse 
Should trace their lives' heroic course, 
And to our age their fame rehearse 

In fulsome strain ; 
For never since the world began, 
And deeds in Avidening currents ran. 
Have men endtired the more for man 

His rights to gain. 



What though we read of fairer skies, 
And vineclad hills that higher rise. 
And greener fields to greet the eye 
Than these they loved ! 
2 



18 THE TOW^ OF IPSWICH. 

We know our skies are fair and bland, 
Our hills in modest beauty stand, 
Our fields spread wide on every hand, 
In verdure clothed. 

Our old town lies beneath the hill ; 
Its shady streets are wide and still j 
Its river murmurs past the mill 

As years increase ; 
The church and school retain their place. 
While on the whole a quiet grace 
Rests like God's blessing on the race 

In sweetest peace. 



I have searched through the records with sedulous ken 
To learn all that I could of those venturesome men 
Who first built their rude homes on tliis since famous spot, 
And divided these lands to their households by lot ; 
But I find that their part in founding a State 
Kept them too busy by far their deeds to relate. 

I suppose those old chaps had a very hard time 

As they worried life through in this rigorous clime ; 

And I dare to presume it is not very rash 

If I say they often were hard up for cash ; 

That their mud chimneys would smoke, and their whitest chicks 

Would quite often " peg out " with the old-fashioned pips. 

Then there were the measles, and the big whooping-cough, 

And ugly warts on their hands they could not get off; 

And, besides other troubles that pestered their brats, 

They had family jars and connubial spats, 

With precisely the same little bother and fret 

Their unfortunate descendants struggle with yet. 

What fun it would be could we only restore 
The picture, now faded, of years gone before ! — 



POEM BY REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D. 19 

The wheel and the distaff; the cradle and chair; 
The queer Mother Hubbard, and nicely pulled hair ; 
The bright pewter platters that answered for tin ; 
The hole in the door for the cat to get in ; 
The pot-hooks and trammels that hung from the crane, 
The pots and the kettles attached to the same ; 
The wide fireplace with the mantel above it, 
On this side an oven, on that side a closet ; 
The bellows, the shovel, the poker and tongs. 
And each hung iip or standing where it belongs ; 
The queer sprawling creatures they dubbed hre-dogs, 
That bravely stood under their backload of logs ; 
The musket and cow's horn hung on rude brackets ; 
The corner beyond with its liomespun jackets ; 
The dames with their kerchiefs and caps white as snow ; 
The men's hair in pigtails, each tied with a bow : 
All would strike us as odd, and force us to giin 
At the queer little world these queer folks were in ; 
And yet, after all, there might be much more grinning 
If they could see us with our follies and sinning. 

Some grumbling old heathen, I 've forgotten his name, 

Said, " For all the world's mischief, some Avoman 's to blame ; " 

Eut his speech, would have been a great deal exacter, 

Had he said, " In human affairs she 's chief factor." 

All know Mother Eve in the very beginning 

Susceptible Adam beguiled into sinning ; 

While Adah and Zillah, each but half of a wife, 

Made muddle and torment of old Lamech's life. 

But time will allow me but a brief allusion 

As I dump them all in in a careless confusion : 

There were Rebecca and Jane and old Ketui'ah, 

Rachel, Ophelia, and prophetess Deborah, 

Abigail and Mary, and grandmother Eunice, 

Zenobia, who queened it outside of Tunis ; 

And Helen of Troy, the most winning of ladies ; 

And that other Helen, the mother of babies ; 

There were Huldah and Ruth, and Mehitable too, 

And wicked old Jezebel, whom the eunuchs slew ; 



20 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

Phoelie and Lois, Trypliena and Trypliosa, 

(I must not forget the maid of Saragossa,) 

Elizabeth, Priscilla, Be.tsy, and Hannah, 

Isabella, Victoria, and Susannah ; 

Xantippe the scold, who blew up old Socrates ; 

Pocahontas, the maid with feet in moccasons ; 

Jerusha, Jemima, and old Mother Carey 

Whose chickens will never fly over the prairie ; 

And gay Cleopatra, whose post mortem fame is 

Not greater than that of the great Semiramis. 

Now here I should add names of ladies of Avorth 

Who blessed the first years of this place of our birth. 

But recorders were just a little bit blind, 

Or bachelors crusty, who wives could not find ; 

For scarce has a woman had mention or place — 

Except note of the death that comes to the race. 

To snatch her in part from oblivion's grave 

One woman's short story old John Winthrop gave, 

As worth recording for the years to come, 

Because, though blind and deaf, and also dumb, 

She still, in spite of Nature's cruel dealing, 

The names of men could tell by sense of feeling. 

Yet even here is evidence completest 

That man, and not the woman, is the weakest ; 

For, had she chanced to be of man's estate possessed, 

No woman's name by any sense could have been guessed. 



That the women of our early history may this day have their 
due share of honor, I offer the following sentiment : — 

Here 's to the women of the olden time, — 

The women strong and brave and true. 
Who bore the rigors of this northern clime : 

To them are chiefest honors due. 
They were no courtly dames in raiment fine, 

With gems their tresses gleaming through ; 
Theirs was the robing of a faith sublime, 

That made them strong and brave and true. 



POEM BY REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D. 21 

Here 's to the -woiucn of the oKlcn day, — 

The wives and sisters true and sweet, 
Who walked with even steps in virtue's ways : 

For them are stintless honors meet. 
They were no triflers, trilling lightsome lays, 
■ With lovelorn victims at their feet : 
Theirs were the songs of faith and holy praise 

That made them women true and sweet. 

Here 's to the women now beneath the sod, — 

The motliers tender, wise, and good. 
Who taught their children love and faith in God, 

By which they brave in danger stood. 
The paths of righteousness they humbly trod. 

With love restraining natures rude : 
Their strength was virtue and a f;iitli in God, 

That made them tender, wise and good. 



I now change the measure, theme, and so forth, 
And adopt the well-known style of Woodworth. 

How dear to my heart are the names heard in childhood. 

When fond recollection decrees their review ! 
The Caldwells and Treadwells, and a tall Underwood, 

And all the old codgers my early days knew. 
The flock of the Shatswells, the Lanes who lived near them, 

The Russells and Rosses where the pudding-bag split, 
The Perleys and Potters, with Jfourses to rear them, 

Are the names of some people I heard when a chit. 
The old-fashioned titles, the time-lionored titles, 

The names of the people I heard when a chit. 

The Kimballs and Cogswells are names heard with pleasure. 

And Baker and Kinsman and Conant as well ; 
The Browns, Smiths, and Wades, with the Waits, fill this measure, 

And make room for Appletons, Dodges, and Bell, 



22 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

The Willcombs, the Parleys, the Haskells, and Goodhues, 
The Heards, the Hodgkinses, the Clarks, and the Millers, 

The Colburns and Choates, Cowles and Perkins crews. 

The Lakemans, the Willetts, the Eusts and the Spillers — 

The old-fashioned titles, the time-honored titles, 
The names of the people I heard in my youth. 

How sweet to old crones in some kitchen's warm corner 

To call up the names Ellsworth, Sutton, and Wise, 
And tell of the pranks of Lord, Manning, or Warner, 

In the days when they dazzled their girlish eyes ! 
And now, far removed from the home of my childhood, 

Of Harrises, Dunnells, and Newmans I hear, 
With Averills, Fellowses, and Posters as good, 

The names of the people once sweet to my ear — 
The old-fashioned titles, the time-honored titles, 

The names of the people still sweet to my ear. 



I conclude with a short walk, very abruptly ended : — 

And now, fellow-townsmen, it is well to suggest, 
That before we lie down on our pillows to rest. 
We wallc through our village, and out on our plains, 
To find the old spots with tlieir wonderful names. 
And more wonderful legends of red men or white, 
The ears of our childhood that filled with delight. 
Among these old scenes we will wander at will, 
Beginning our walk here on " Meeting-house Hill." 
Here rose the first temple of praise and of prayer, 
And here were the pillorj^, stocks, and the chair 
In which the women who dared to arouse 
The town with their tongues Avere given a souse. 
Here also paraded, when tlie hamlet Avas young, 
A slanderous vixen, a split stick on her tongue : 
Here the grave niling elders of Church and of State 
Together held counsel o'er interests great ; 
And here came the people on days for election, 



POEJI BY KEV. J. O. KXOWLES, D.D. 23 

With beans black and white to make their selection 

As they dropped them into the box : so it seems 

They who counted those ballots had to know beans. 

And now lift up your eyes : there, verdant and still, 

Is the playground of childhood, — the old "Town Hill." 

"We pass, on our way leading down to the valley, 

The street that our fathers called " Pussy-cat Alley." 

Not to tax our pedal extremities hard, 

Wo will leave on our right our famous " Shipyard," 

And, rather than put our rhymes out of joint, 

Just mention that down there lie " Nabby's Point," 

The "Diamond Stage" that never had Avheels, 

And " Labor in Vain," too crooked for eels. 

To climb once more the Avell-remembered hill, 

"Hog Lane" ascending, helps our footsteps still. 

At length we reach the summit, and there comes 

To sight an isle of sand and pines and plums ; 

This side the river, with its branching creeks ; 

And, fairer than the Euxine to the Greeks, 

Beyond, the ocean rises to the view, 

And ceaseless rolls its waves of liquid blue. 

Why need we weary our old limbs with toil 1 

Let eyes, not feet, now march about our soil : 

At first and landward seek the landscape's brim, 

And count the verdant hills that shut it in. 

See " Great Neck," where they pasture sheep and Iambs, 

It verges the famous camping-grounds for clams ; 

See " Heartbreak," where in vain a maid souglit lover ; 

And " Jewett's," "Prospect," "Eagle," "Boar," and "Plover." 

To climb on "Turkey Hill," our old-time strength is o'er; 

We '11 be content to waddle round on " Turkey Shore." 

What famous spots Avithin this landscape lie. 

Which spreads its lights and shades before the eye ! — 

" New Boston," where we gobbled cherries ; 

And "Bull Brook," where we i:)icked our berries ; 

And "Pine Swamp," Avhere Ave tramped from morn till late, 

To find at dusk our homeward road at " Red Gate." 



24 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

If our eyes are as sharp as we claim them to be, 

There's "Hor^town" and ''Firetown" and "Fly-town "to see, 

And "Linebrook" and "Goose Village," with "Goshen" beyond, 

Bat never the least glimpse of old "Baker's Pond." 

We cannot forget those bright days, if we would. 

When we travelled for fun to old " Candlewood;" 

The whole town to us was filled full of charms, 

From " Little Comfort" away across to the "Farms." 

We turn our eyes below, and at our feet, 

Elm-shaded, lies in peace old " Pudding Street," 

So named because a pudding hard and dry 

Was stolen by some tipsy passers-by. 

These later years from vulgar names have shrunk, 

And called it "High" because the thieves were drunk. 

But we must pause. The memories of the past, 
Like ocean tides, are rising deep and fast. 
Below are corners, streets, and pleasant nooks 
That charmed our wilhng hours away from books, 
And space supplied for play, or shade for rest. 
In days agone, our sweetest and our best. 

Having brought you in my rhymes to the top of this old hill, 
and to look lovingly down on our grand old mother-town, I am 
sure you will allow it is just the place to stop. 

The choir sang Dudley Buck's anthem, " Praise 
the Lord." 

President Haskell. — Your attention is now 
asked to an address by the Rev. John C. Kimball 
of Hartford, Conn. 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 25 



HISTOPJCAL ADDRESS. 



THE EVOLUTION OF A NEW ENGLAND TOWN. 

'T^WO liundred and fifty years ago to-day, as our president 
-^ has already said, it was ordered by the General Court 
of INIassachusetts that "Agawam shall be called Ipswitch;" 
and this act, the modest christening of our infant town, born 
here in the wilderness seventeen months before, we, its chil- 
dren and grandchildren, have met now to celebrate. 

Two hundred and fifty years of municipal life ! Measured 
with the antiquity of many towns in the Old World, witli the 
two hundred and fifty thousand years of man's probable abode 
on earth, and with the vast periods since the earth itself 
emerged from its swaddling-clothes of fire-mist, they are, of 
course, only the merest point of time, hardly worthy of a 
passing glance in the antiquarian's backward-looking thought ; 
but measured by events and by the development of the world's 
finer life, they are hardly less than all the vast ages, counted 
or uncounted, that stretcli behind them to the farthest rim of 
time. When John Winthrop and his twelve companions 
made tlieir first voyage liere from Boston, if they had ever 
heard of Copernicus and his new theory of the sun and eartli, 
or of Galileo and the wonders of his " Tuscan optic glass," or 
of Harvey and his circulation of the blood, or of Lord Bacon 
and his Novum Organum, it was only as far-off rumors, not 
coloring in the slightest degree their actual thought. The 
chief part of all our great discoveries in science and art, and 
of all our grand ideas about liberty, self-government, tolera- 
tion, and the rights of man, and not only this, but our whole 
existing way of looking at the universe, — at nature, man, life, 
religion, everything, as under the reign of constitutional law 



'vUj^^UU* 



26 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

ratlier than of personal will, have been brought to light since 
their day. And in passing from the Ipswich of 1884 back to 
the Ipswich of 1634, we pass from the modern to the ancient, 
from the noisy Now, with its telegraph and steam-engine, to 

" Those silent halls 
Where lie the bygone ages in their palls," 

almost as completely as in going to the birthday of a town 
which had counted its thousand years. 

But why should we go back at all into the past ? why take 
any more notice of this day than of any other in the town's 
history ? why not heed those who tell us that regard for the 
olden time is a foolish sentiment ; that what we need to study 
is not our ancestors, but ourselves ; and that the truly pro- 
gressive community is the one which spends its money in 
building up factories rather than monuments, and in opening 
workshops rather than tombs ? It is a question which re- 
ceives a most satisfactory answer from one of those very 
sciences, that of evolution, which has come up in our own 
time. The past is found under its teaching to be one of the 
mightiest of all factors in making the present ; the study of 
our ancestors, to be the surest of all ways by which to know 
ourselves. The Ipswich of to-day, its fields, factories, churches, 
and schools, and its living men and women, are only the leaves 
and blossoms of a tree whose root, trunk, and branches are the 
Ipswich of the past, as impossible to be lived and understood 
without it, as those of our gardens would be, if severed from 
their parent stem. We work, worship, and believe, even the 
most radical of us, not with our own strength, faith, and 
devotion alone, but with those, also, of our buried sires. It is 
because the truth-seekers of our age stand on the shoulders 
of all the truth-seekers of the past, rather than because of 
their own tallness, that they see so well the new truths 
of our time. And when our three hundred and forty-seven 
Ipswich soldiers went forth in the late Union war to defend 
their country and the cause of liberty on new battlefields, 
it was the courage, patriotism, and liberty-loving of all the 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 27 

heroes out of tlie grand old town wlio had fought the battles 
of the lievolution, marclied to the siege of Louisburg, and 
faced under woods and stars the Indian tomahawk in days 
gone by, that again, side by side with their own valor, flashed 
in their eyes, thrilled in their hearts and blazed in their guns. 

" Words pass as wind ; but wliere great deeds are done 
A power abides, transfused from sire to son : 
The bo\' feels deeper meanings thrill his ear, 
Which, tingling through his pulse, lifelong shall run. 
With sure impulsion to keep honor clear, 
When, pointing round, his father whispers, 'Here, 
Here where we stand, stood they, the purely great — 
Then nameless, now a power, and mixed with fate.' " 

And as every farmer knows that digging in the earth among 
the roots of his trees is one of the surest ways by wliich to 
increase and enrich their fruit up among the branches, so our 
town's money and time spent to-day in digging among the 
memories of its two hundred and fifty bygone years are not 
for a pleasant holiday merely, or for the gratification of an 
idle curiosity alone, but are what will show themselves better 
tlian by any other use in its richness and growth through all 
the years to come. 

Moreover, the fact that our town has grown up from its 
past to be only a small community, and that it remains still 
not a city, but only a town, makes it all the worthier of being 
tints commemorated and studied. What Tennyson says of a 
single flower is equally true of a single town : — 

*' Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck yon out of the crannies, 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower ; but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

The towns of K"ew England are its municipal flowers, the 
things to know which is to know what in all government is 



28 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

alike the most human and the most divine. It was within 
tlieir limits that was first tried on American soil the great 
experiment of a free commonwealth ; by their hand tliat was 
organized, as never before, the now famous jjrinciple of " a gov- 
ernment of the people, by the people, for the people ; " in their 
school that Liberty learned to read and write not a few of the 
grand v/ords with which so often since she has tlu-illed all 
humanity's heart; out of their ideal, moulded in miniature, 
that was afterwards carved the colossal grandeur of the whole 
republic. De Tocqueville well says, " The impulsion of politi- 
cal activity was given to America in its towns;" Freeman, 
that " the present greatness of our Confederation is mainly 
owing to the littleness of its municipal beginnings ; " Gordon, 
that " every town is an incorporated republic;" and Professors 
Hosmer of St. Louis, and Adams of tlie Johns Hopkins t^niver- 
sity, who have made special studies of this subject, that "its 
towns are the primordial cells of our body politic," and that 
" the reproduction of the old English town system under our 
New England colonial conditions is one of the most curious 
and instructive phenomena of American history." The fact 
is, no one can understand the real nature and value of a de- 
mocracy, no one especially the foundation principles of our 
own government, who does not understand its New England 
towns ; and among them all there is none in which these 
characteristics are more complete and the processes of their 
growth more distinct, none which has a fairer record, or that 
will pay better for being studied, than our own beautiful 
Ipswich. 

" Whatever moukis of various brain 

E'er shaped the workl to weal or woe, 
Whate'er made empires wax or wane, 
To him that hath not eyes in vain 
Our vilkige microcosm can show." 

And so, as a subject valuable in itself, and appropriate for 
this occasion, I want to speak of the forces concerned in 
the planting and development of Ipswich as a characteristic 
New England town, not of its municipal structure alone, for 



IIISTOmCAL ADDRESS. 29 

this is only its skeleton, but of all that relates to its life 
and spirit, and that has helped to give it a Hesh-and- blood 
reality. 

I. i'irst, as to its original stock. There is no denying 
tliat blood tells in the making of a community even more than 
in the making of an individual. ' North America planted with 
Spaniards would have been South America in spite of all 
that points of compass and parallels of latitude could have 
done. When civilization decided to try its experiment of a 
new nation on these western shores, it asked humanity first of 
all for its very best seed with which to do it ; and most nobly 
did humanity respond to the call. As old William Stoughton 
expressed it in his election sermon in 1668, " God sifted a 
whole nation that he might send choice grain over into this 
wilderness," nay, more than that, he sifted for this purpose a 
whole race. Its settlers were not only of English blood, but 
of the old Aryan stock. For five thousand years before they 
reached these shores, they had been on their westward travels. 
All Northern Europe bore the rich marks of their Pilgrim feet ; 
and, when they undertook to conquer the wilderness here, they 
had in their veins the strength, courage, and manhood which 
liad already conquered a score of wildernesses there. 

The detachment of them which settled among our own 
hills — John Winthrop and his twelve companions in 1633, 
a hundred others with their families a year after, and at the 
end of fifteen years a thousand in all — shared to the fullest 
extent the qualities of this original New England stock. Old 
Cotton Mather said in 1638, that "here was a renowned 
church, consisting mostly of such illuminated Christians that 
their pastors, in the exercise of their ministry, had not so 
much disciples as judges;" and Johnson, eight years later, 
in his "Wonder- Working Providence," wrote, "The peopling 
of this town is by men of good ranke and quality, many of 
them having the yearly revenue of large lands in England 
before they came to the wilderness." Prominent among tliem 
were such personages as General Samuel Appleton, at once 



30 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

a brilliant civilian and a brave Indian fighter; Anne Dudley 
Bradstreet, a genial, cultivated woman and New England's 
first poetess ; Kev. Thomas Cobbett, a leading divine, mighty 
alike in prayer with God and in logic with man ; Major-Gen- 
eral William Denison, a valued soldier, scholar, statesman, and 
man of affairs alike in the colony and in the town ; Nicholas 
Eastou, an early freethinker, who afterwards, as a prominent 
citizen of Newport, E.I., gave his name to its now fashionable 
beach ; Giles Firmin, the quaint old physician, whose affec- 
tions were equally divided between " physick and divinitee ; " 
William Hubbard, the well-known historian of early New 
England ; John Norton, a celebrated minister, theologian, and 
scholar, well " studied in arts and tongues," author of the first 
Latin book ever printed in America, a member of the noted 
Cambridge synod, and so eloquent a preacher, that one of his 
admirers used to walk thirty miles to hear his voice ; the 
Eogers family, descendants of the great Smithfield martyr, 
and one of them in later years president of Harvard Uni- 
versity ; Samuel Symonds, for a long time deputy governor 
of the Commonwealth, and, with his wife liebekah, a leader 
of the Colony's social life ; Richard Saltonstall, America's 
first abolitionist; Francis Wainwright, a leading business 
man ; and Nathaniel Ward, equally distinguished as author, 
preacher, jurist, and scholar, whose "Simple Cobbler of 
Agawam" has long been our town's ancient classic, and 
whose " Body of Liberties " the foundation-stone of our 
State's independent sovereignty. Their names and deeds are 
among New England's historic treasures. Not another town 
in the Commonwealth could sliow a brighter list. They 
brought wisdom, energy, and dignity to the shaping of 
affairs at home; and under their influence Ipswich for a 
whole generation had a leading voice with the Colony at 
large on the field of war, in the ecclesiastical synod, and 
at the General Court. 

It was a stock, to be sure, which, so far as its own direct 
members were concerned, immediately afterwards almost 
entirely disappeared. That intellectual dark day which came 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 31 

over all the rest of New England in its second and third gen- 
erations was experienced likewise here. And though the town 
has never been without a fair number of worthy citizens, 
though in the devolution it had its Farley, Wade, Hodgkins, 
Wigglesworth, and Dane, and in later years its Dana, Frisbie, 
Oakes, INIanning, Hammatt, Heard, Choate, Lord, and Shats- 
well, they were mostly of other connections, and no one will 
claim that it can show a list now which will compare at all 
for eminence with that of its earliest generation ; so that it 
would seem at first glance as if blood had been only a very 
slight force in the town's evolution, and its children no indi- 
cation of how noble was 

" The planting of its parent tree." 

But Nature's method of using blood is not that of confining it 
to a few special families. It is intensely democratic. Its ob- 
ject is to build up the race ; aud it uses here precisely the same 
methods aud principles that it does in building up a continent. 
We all know how it is in the natural realm. First a great 
mountain-chain is thrown up high above the sea ; then winds, 
rains, snows, frosts, suns, waves, all the powers of nature, 
begin to wear down its peaks, and spread their material out 
on a common level. By and by there is another upheaval, but 
in a different place, then another wearing-down ; and the pro- 
cess goes on till at last we have not any individual mountains 
so high as those at first, but a whole continent rich in soils, 
waving with harvests, and filled with life. So with the human 
race. First a few great families are thrown up with talents 
far above their fellows. But the next step is not to lift their 
children still higher up, but — by marriage, emigration, the use 
of their vitality for the common weal, a thousand subtle 
influences — to wear them down and to mingle their blood 
with that of the common people, lifting them all up. By and 
by comes a new series of mountain souls, not this time the 
old Endicotts, Denisons, and Winthrops, but an Otis, Adams, 
Henry, Warren, and Washington, fresh out of the people; 
then the same wearing-down in the next generations ; and by 



32 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

and by, in some great social convulsion, another series, this 
time a Sumner, Phillips, Garrison, Farragut, and Lincoln, used 
in a like way ; and at last we have, not a few great families 
towering in splendor to the skies, with the rest only mudsills 
at their feet, but a whole race lifted above the sea of appetite 
and passion, waving with the rich harvests of civilization, and 
filled with a diviner life. 

It is in this way precisely that the good blood of its first 
settlers has counted in the growth and development of our 
tow^n. We have not the old. families with us ; but we do have 
the old virtues. They are not concentrated in a few indi- 
viduals, but scattered far and wide in the whole community. 
The sum of intelligence, morals, public spirit, social courtesy, 
and domestic worth, is greater now — all statistics show it — 
than it ever was before. And who shall say that this is not 
real progress ? Who say, in spite of Carlyle, that a commu- 
nity of three thousand good men and women on the level 
of our common humanity is not worth more in the sight of 
God and of a true civilization than one of thirty families lifted 
into prominence, and all the others left in ignorance ? who, 
that we ought not to honor the fathers of our town most of 
all to-day, because they have transmitted their virtues, not 
to their own children exclusively, but impartially to all its 
citizens ? 

II. Passing- now from the seed to the soil, from the people 
to the PLACE ITSELF as an agency in its development, a factor 
known in science as " the influence of the environment," its 
site seems from the very start to have attracted attention. The 
famous Captain John Smith, sailing along the New England 
coast in 1614, was struck with "the many rising hills of 
Agawam." The Pilgrim Fathers heard of it in 1620 as a 
desirable locality where to found a settlement. Governor 
John Winthrop declared in 1632 that it was "the best 
place for cattle and tillage in the land." Wood, in his 
"New England's Prospect," written shortly after, described 
it as "abounding in fish and flesh, meads and marshes. 



HISTOKICAL ADDEESS. 33 

plain ploughing-grouud, and no rattlesnakes;" and John- 
son in 1646' referred to it as situated on "a faire and 
delightful river," and as having "very good land for 
husbandry." 

But these favorable descriptions are only comparative, and 
must not blind us to the fact that when Masconnomet, saga- 
more of Agawam, its old Indian chief, sold it for twenty pounds 
to John Winthrop, it was essentially in a state of nature, and 
of nature not as we think of it to-day, — "a realm of shaven 
lawns, pleasant groves, bowers of honeysuckle and rose, bab- 
bling streams, and lowing herds," civilized, poetic, and uplift- 
ing, a friend of man, — but nature savage, wild, and dreary, 
man's bitter foe. In the centre of the town for many years was 
a huge swamp. The soil, except at the few openings cultivated 
by the Indians, w^as covered with a dense forest, not only 
living trees, but the accumulated rubbish, through long ages, 
of their dead and fallen companions. Where the river now 
winds as a thread of silver through the emerald meadows was 
a thick morass, described by an early writer as " famous for 
bears." There were no bridges, and no roads, only Indian 
paths creeping through the forests, so imperfect, even after 
the road to knowledge had been opened, that an Ipswicli boy 
going to Harvard College, in 1666, lost his way, and was out 
in the woods all night. Then, worse than any material dis- 
comforts and savagery was the very atmosphere of the wilder- 
ness itself, gloomy, harsh, and weird. Imagination lent new 
horrors to reality, and as Edward Everett graphically says, 
describing New England as a whole, besides the actual dan- 
gers which beset its settlers from liowling wolf and ravening 
bear, " unearthly cries were sometimes heard in the crackling 
woods ; glimpses were caught at dusk of animals for which 
natural history had no names ; and strange footmarks, of 
which men did not like to speak, were seen in the winter's 
snow." 

Is it any wonder that our fathers, environed with such 
influences as these, should have been borne down at first 
by their awful weight ? Any wonder that their stock in the 

3 



34 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

second and third generations should seem to have degenerated, 
that their religion assumed new sternness and gloom, and that 
a delusion like the Salem witchcraft threw over them its 
bewildering blight ? Any wonder that their town, with the 
cessation of its European immigration, should apparently come 
to a stand in its growth ? 

But these darker effects were only for a while. Its settlers, 
animated with the courage, grit, skill, and industry which ages 
of like war had incorporated into their Aryan blood, went to 
work to subdue their huge foe, repeating on these western 
shores, under other names, the battles against the great nature 
giants Avhich their Norse ancestors had sung in the legends 
and imagery of the weird Scandinavian mythology a thousand 
years before. Beginning in our own town at Jeffries' Neck, 
and working their course up the river as the only practical 
highway, they built their houses and homes along its bank, 
cleared a space back of it fcfr their gardens and fields, holding 
much of the land at first in common, and established on the 
hill their church and school The sound of the axe, sharpened 
with its owner's " ancestral feud of trees," rang bravely through 
the woods. The soil, unclothed of the forest, was taught to 
nourish at its dark breast, side by side with its own Indian 
corn, a large foster family of European grains, — barley, wheat, 
oats, and rye. The Indian trail was converted, with many an 
argument of gravel, to a Christian road. The fair river, dallying 
hitherto loosely with the shore, was wedded to its embraces 
with a proper bridge. The matted and tangled vales Avere 
combed and brushed, and freed from vermin with the plough 
and harrow, and the crack of musket-balls. The shaggy- 
browed hills, shorn of their locks by the clicking axe, had 
their heads baptized with honest Puritan names. And thus 
year by year, and little by little, the rough possibilities of the 
savage Agawam were wrought into the charming realities of 
the civilized Ipswich. Among the many instructive features 
of our town-records, not the least valuable are their references 
every now and then to the various stages of this physical 
growth, — the five shillings apiece paid at first for all the 



HISTOEICAL ADDRESS. 35 

wolves* heads nailed up on the meetinghouse-door (how much 
more attractive, doubtless, to the boy attendants than the 
heads of the long sermons !) ; the laying-out and improvement 
of the various roads, not, indeed, so direct and scientific as 
the ones begun now, 

" Vexing McAdam's ghost witli poundeJ slate," 

yet richer, how much ! in historic suggestiveness and in real 
artistic beauty, following, as they did, the trail, ages old, of 
wild Indians and wild beasts, winding, as they had to, around 
the hills, and along the streams, and made, as they were, by 
each man's working on them with his own hands ; the exist- 
ence of the Common Lands, the historic tap-root of the town 
idea, running deep down into the buried centuries amid the 
mould of old Teutonic forests ; the laws and customs connect'ed 
M-ith their use, full of value as beiug the same toe-marks on 
the soil that our ancestors made all over Northern Europe as 
the record of their wanderings there ages before they came to 
America ; ^ and their final surrender by the commoners to the 
town to pay its Eevolutionary debts, a most honorable act ; 
the names given to our different localities, some of them, as 
Goose Village, Turkey Shore, Hog Lane, and Pudding Street, 
not remarkably romantic and high-sounding, though with one 
exception, in Heartbreak Hill, yet all honestly significant, and 
in reason's ear rejoicing far more than the sentimental titles, 
with no appropriateness at all, attached so often to other j^laces ; 
the building of the famous stone bridge 

" That filled the county with renown, 
And did with honor Ipswich crown, 
Whose beauty and magnificence 
Considering the small expense," 

as its poet finely said, were unequalled by any ever done before ; 
the gathering around it, when completed, of its opponents and 
sceptics fully expecting to see its arches, as they had predicted, 

^ See Professor H. B. Adams's valuahle paper piihlished in the Johns Hop- 
kins University Studies on the Germanic Origin of New England Towns. 



36 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

crash clown, with the first test of a loaded team, into the river 
below, and the saddled horse of Colonel Choate, its builder, 
secreted near by, ready to gallop him away from their inevi- 
table " I told you so's " in case the prophecy should be fufilled, 
so doubtful was the experiment ; the difficulty of getting the 
wooden bridge at Warner's Mills, the conclusive argument 
against it of one old gentleman being, " What would the rest 
of the country do afterwards for lumber?" so vast then was 
the vmdertaking ; the narrowing of the town's domain by the 
dowry given to its two lovely daughters when they set up for 
themselves, — Hamilton, formerly "the Hamlet," in 1793, and 
Essex, formerly " Chebacco," in 1819; and the endless discus- 
sions in town-meeting about fences, lanes, lots, and gravel-pits, 
mingled with votes on the great doctrines of religion, and 
decisions on the foundation principles of government. 

Looking at the town as it is to-day, at its busy stores, its 
pleasant homes, its smooth roads, its graceful elms, its fruitful 
fields, its noble hills, its lovely river, its convenient bridges, 
its woods prowled through by no beasts more deadly than the 
mosquito, and at its soil haunted by no ally of the Evil One 
more terrible than witch-grass, at this casket of nature so 
worthy of holding the jewel of civilization, and comparing it 
with its state at iirst, how can we do otherwise than be pro- 
foundly impressed with the immensity of the labor by which 
the result has been attained, — the weary hands which for two 
hundred and fifty years have cleared up swamp and field into 
beauty, and the busy brains which for eight generations have 
put their life and thought into dwelling, bridge, and street ? 
We praise our fathers for what they have done in procuring 
our liberties, and establishing our institutions ; and it is well. 
But they have done not less in building up the very soil on 
which we live ; and, if there were nothing else to make us 
honor their memories to-day, we sliould have enough for it in 
every view of beauty before our eyes and in every rod of earth 
beneath our feet. 

The material town, however, is only a part of the result 
of their struggle with nature ; its outward beauty, only one of 



niSTOPJCAL ADDRESS. 37 

the ways in which the influence of the environment has made 
itself felt. The outcome of action here, the same as every- 
where else, has been twofold : one the visible Ipswich, its 
houses, streets, and fields ; the other, the unseen town, its spirit, 
life, and character. Had our fathers found the place all ready 
made when they came to its shores, found a paradise here, and 
not a wilderness, it might have done for them some other 
special work, might have developed them into more luxury, 
refinement, aud culture ; but it would never have become a 
full Nevv^ England town, never a fit atom in the body of a 
great republic. Cultivating the soil, the soil in turn cultivat- 
ed them. Fighting Indians aud bears, the Indians and bears 
taught them, when the time came, to fight Englishmen. The 
strength of the white-oak stumps they pulled out of the fields 
went into their arms and into their characters. Every blow 
struck in making a better road and better bridge was a blow 
struck also in making a better citizen. And, building up the 
outer town of wood and earth, the outer town reacted, and 
built one witbin of manhood and womanhood, — built that 
townly spirit without which the best streets, houses, and fields 
would be only as a fair body without a living soul. 

III. But what inspired them to undertake this struggle with 
the wilderness ? what strengthened and upheld them in carry- 
ing it on ? Foremost of all and notoriously it was eeligion ; 
and looking at religion simply as an earthly force, to be judged 
of in the same way as all other earthly forces, by its effects, 
what a tremendous factor it has been in the evolution of our 
whole New Emrland life ! It be^an its work Avith tlie selection 
of the material for its settlement ; it being naturally not the 
weak, the mercenary, and the conservative, but only the brav- 
est, strongest, freest, most progressive souls, that would dare 
under its influence break the bonds of the past, encounter 
the opposition of an Established Church, and launch out on 
the sea of an untried faith, — just the ones with which to start 
a new world. Taking on the one side the form of religious 
persecution, and on the other the equally powerful one of re- 



38 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

ligious iDersistence, it supplied between their action the one 
tremendous force that was needed to drive them away from 
the comforts of their old home to the privations of a far-off 
savage shore. Arrived on its borders, what else could have 
sustained them there, amid the awful toils and hardships of 
its wilderness life, but a sublime religious trust ? And then, 
not content with merely teaching them to endure life till they 
should be called out of it into the kingdom of heaven, it went 
to work to create for them the kingdom of heaven riuht here 
among its pine-trees, Indians, wolves, and bears. 

It was this iuflaeuce which operated with all its force on 
the little band of men and women who laid the foundations 
of our own community. Their first act was to organize a 
church, — the ninth oldest in the Colony, and for a long 
time a leading one in all its affairs. A succession of able 
ministers — Ward, Norton, Cobbett, Hubbard, and the four 
Rogerses in the First Parish (the last a most remarkable case 
of natural apostolic succession), Dana at the South Parish, 
and Wise at Chebacco, men who would have been a glory to 
any place — filled their pulpits ; Governor Winthrop himself, 
also, on one occasion, walking all tlie distance from Boston 
to " exercise among them in tlie way of prophecy." All tlie 
distinctive characteristics of Puritanism, — its two ministers, 
pastor and teacher, its deacons, its tithing-men, its timing of 
the preaching by the hour-glass, its seating of the men on the 
one side and the women on the other, its peculiar dress, its call 
to service by the drum-beat, its weapons stacked at the door, 
its long sermons (at least an hour, with salary shortened if 
the sermon was), its hard doctrines, and its rigid virtues — 
all these were to be found here in their grand completeness. 
" How many are the elect ?" " Is the soul immortal before its 
union with Christ ? " " Whether a person may not attain to 
sanctification, and yet be damned ? " " Did God make hell 
when he did the rest of the universe?" "Will immersion 
here save from fire hereafter ? " — these, mingled with politics, 
manners, and dress, w^ere some of the topics preached upon, 
these their daily meat and drink. Everything was severe, 



HISTOEICAL ADDEESS. 39 

stern, square. There was no toleration allowed for differences 
of opinion — none, at least, outside of their own ranks. Ward 
■writes, in his " Simple Cobbler of Agawam : " " It is said men 
ought to have liberty of conscience, and that it is persecution 
to debar them from it. I can rather stand amazed than reply 
to this. It is an astonishment to think that the brains of men 
should be parboiled in such impious ignorance. No practical 
sin is so sinful as some error of judgment ; no man so accursed 
with indelible infamy and dedolent impenitency as authors of 
heresie." And in harmony with this kind of teaching a poor 
Quaker-woman, Lydia Wardwell, stripped to the waist, was 
publicly whipped in front of the tavern, amid a large circle 
of men and boys ; her naked breasts being torn by the rough 
post to which she was tied as she writhed beneath the blows. 
Everybody was obliged to attend church ; the seven selectmen 
being ordered in one instance, 1661, to sell the farm of a 
man and woman who made distance from the sanctuary an 
excuse for their absence, and to move them within a more 
convenient reach of its blessed privileges — apparently a most 
arbitrary proceeding, but having politically a most powerful 
influence in evolving the town's unity.^ No distinction was 

1 A good illustration of how tilings, whicli judged apart from tlieir surround- 
ings and at the standpoint of a later age seem harsh and uncalled for, are in 
their direct relations and for their own time exceedingly wise and proper. 
The great danger to which isolated settlers were then exposed, even when 
safe from other foes, was that of being overpowered by the wilderness around 
them, and relapsing iuto barbarism. In spite of all efforts to prevent it, there 
were some such stragglers. For instance, white settlers, among them Jeffries, 
owner of Jeffries' Neck, had evidently come to Ipswich before Winthrop's au- 
thorized settlement in 1633. But here, as in all other such cases, they seem 
to have become lost to civilization, and to have counted for nothing in the 
country's subsequent development. The early colonists were like an army 
inarching through an enemy's territory, — safe only when kept in close ranks, 
yea, even then, as their degeneracy in the third and fourth generation shows, 
barely able to resist the touch of their awful foe. And it was a sense of this 
danger which led their leaders, as we have frequent evidence in the annals of 
Massachusetts, to be chary about forming new settlements, to hold those formed 
close together, and to recall parties who had wandered off too far from the main 
centres, — a course in which they were powerfully aided, as above, by their re- 
ligion, which bound them fast to the meeting-house, and by their common lands, 
which enabled them, while cultivating large fields, to live in compact villages. 



40 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

made at first between civil and ecclesiastical affairs ; the same 
pages of the record containing votes about the removal of 
errors from religion and of rubbish from the roads, the salary 
to be paid for ministers and the bounty to be paid for wolves. 
The town and the parish, the town-house and the meeting- 
house, were all one, and that one the church. Only professing 
Christians were made freemen, and allowed to vote, and hold 
office. A person could not be a hog-reeve till he had expe- 
rienced a change of heart. Fence-viewers, to be elected in 
town-meeting, had first to have been elected from all eternity 
in the counsels of heaven ; and it was of no use for a man to 
aspire to be a town-crier who was not sound on the ques- 
tion of original sin; or the bugler to a training-band, if his 
moral trumpet gave "an uncertain sound." To make the 
town a small theocracy, and to keep the devil out of its 
corn by putting the Lord into all its fences — that everywhere 
was the aim. 

It was an effort which in the nature of things could not 
be wholly successful. The people, having been nursed on the 
fine meal of conscience, found it hard to feed on the coarse 
grass of authority, even thougli its spears were raised in their 
own gardens ; and so the records here, the same as in other 
places, are full of indications, that under the hard Puritan 
crust there lurked often the soft places both of heresy and of 
immorality. Two of the original twelve municipal apostles 
who came here with John Winthrop proved afterwards to be 
traitors to the cause of temperance. As early as 1639, eighty 
errors of doctrine were found to have crept into the Puritan 

It was an instinct— or was it profound statesmanship, or, perhaps, both ? — 
which has been fully vindicated by its results. The South, which had no 
Puritanism and no common lands, developed necessarily the country's southern 
type of society ; and we owe not only the New England town, but with it 
a large element of our New England civilization, to this apparently arbitrary 
Puritan interference with individual liberty, so closely connected are often the 
profoundest principles and the most trivial events. A similar explanation is 
to be given of many other things in Puritan statesmanship which seem to us 
now utterly harsh and intolerant. They were the tyrannies of an hour, 
but the liberties of the ages ; the bigotries of a religion, but the seeds of a 
civilization. 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 41 

faith itself ; so that it became a serious question who should 
keep the keepers. Henry Walton was fined five pounds in 
1G60 for saying he had "as lieve heare a dogg barke as Mr. 
Cobbitt preach," while shortly after Thomas Bragg and Edward 
Coggswell had to pay ten shillings apiece for "fighting in 
the meeting-house on the Lord's Day." Nicholas Easton de- 
clared that " all the elect had an indwelling devil " as well 
as " an indwelling Holy Ghost ; " and when Eoger Williams, 
"with a windmill in liis head," and Anne Hutchinson, with a 
firebrand on her tongue, came along, proclaiming the great 
truths of toleration and religious liberty, they found some 
sympathizers even here in Ipswich. In 1664, other persons 
besides professing Christians having been admitted to the 
right of municipal voting, the separation of tlie town from 
the church began. With the increase of people and their 
spread into the out districts, new societies were necessarily 
formed, — four Cougregationalist ones very early, at Chebacco, 
Linebrook, the Hamlet, and over the river, and a Methodist, 
Unitarian, and Episcopal one more recently at the centre, 
each not without the pangs of parturition in the mother- 
church ; an increasing body, also, of the unchurched. And 
little by little the old Puritanism has been softened, broad- 
ened, and loosened into the charity, the liberality, and, it 
must be confessed, the indifferentism, of religion to-day. 

Yet, with all the imperfections of Puritanism, no one can 
study our town-records, and not admit the grandeur of its 
work the same here as elsewhere, and on the community 
even more than on the individual. Winning the people into 
bondage to the church at home, it helped to free them from 
bondage to the king abroad. Failing in the virtues of charity, 
gentleness, and love, it excelled in those of honesty, purity, 
self-denial, and earnestness. It imparted to its adherents 
exactly tliose qualities which are needed as the foundation of 
a state, — sobriety, thoughtfulness, obedience to law, regard 
for the public good, and, best of all, a new moral fibre deep 
down in the soul itself. Even its sternness, bigotry, intoler- 
ance, and persecution had their vital uses in the connuunity's 



42 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

development, as, under evolution, we are beginning to learn, 
they always have. They were political rather than moral, 
defensive rather than offensive, the iron-hooped buckets with 
which to hold the waters of liberty to their own lips rather 
than the denial to others of the right to draw them up 
from the wells of God, the rough bark and sharp burs with 
which to keep the nut of the new civilization from being 
devoured before it was ripe by the animals of the outside 
\vorld, — the same thing that we find in nature, — and not 
the instruments with which to force its sweetness on unwil- 
ling souls. 

It is a system which has passed away now, and some 
mourn over its loss ; tliink that because it was good once it 
would have been good always, and that the laxity of doctrine, 
falling-off of church attendance, and secularization of Sunday, 
which have taken its place, are an indication that religion 
itself in our old town is less than it was at first. But they, 
too, equally with its assailants, lose sight of God's higher 
truth. Disintegration, not less than integration, is a phase 
of religious growth, is only the crumbling of the barren rock 
with which to make the fruitful soil. The real essence of 
religion is here to-day just as truly as it was under Puritan- 
ism, only now, the same as with the virtues of our ancestors, 
it is spread through the life of the whole commuuity rather 
than concentrated in a few hard doctrines. And as we owe 
the beauty and fertility of our natural town to the fact that 
a layer of hard granite was deposited here ages ago as a foun- 
dation, and that since then a large portion of it has been dis- 
solved by the elements, and mixed up as our common earth, 
so we owe all that is fairest and best in its moral character 
to-day to the twin-fact that it had the old Puritan faith here 
to begin with, and that now a large fraction of it has been 
disintegrated into the dust of its daily life. 

IV. With the separation of its civil from its religious 
affairs, its municipal factor, that is, the force concerned in 
its structure and organization as a political body, comes natu- 



mSTORICAL ADDEESS. 43 

rally the next in order, a feature constituting, not, indeed, tlie 
whole town, yet a vital part of it, what the bones are to the 
animal economy, that on which all its other parts depend, and 
which, more than aught else, determines its species. And in 
studying this, too, we must go back to the Old World for its 
seed. Its fundamental idea — the meeting of the people to 
make their own laws, and the making of them in the very 
place where they were to be administered — was not a new 
creation on our own soil, as some have thought, but one 
brought to it in our Anglo-Saxon blood ; was not made by 
Congregationalism, as some have said, but the town idea that 
made Congregationalism made also the Episcopal, Methodist, 
and Presbyterian polities, for they all have it as their com- 
mon base. Simple as it now seems, it took centuries for its 
growth and the best blood of the race for its nourishment ; can 
be traced back of America to England, and back of England 
to Northern Europe, and back of Europe to Western Asia and 
the Caspian Sea. Julius Csesar found it in the forests of 
Germany among the Cimbri and Suevi, even in his day ; and 
all through the history of the Teutonic races it has been the 
one leading idea which has antagonized that of kingship, and 
is the key to a large part of their wars and convulsions. The 
trouble was, however, that in the Old World it never had a 
really fair chance to unfold itself in actual practice, was kept 
down by the weight of tradition, by the power of the church, 
and by the ignorance and negligence of the people themselves. 
What it needed for its full development was a new and free 
field, a religion in sympathy with its spirit, and a popular 
soil rich enough to give it nourishment — all of which it 
found in the New England wilderness. And, brought to it in 
the cabins of the "Mayflower" and the "Arbella," it was just 
as inevitable that the government organized by their voyagers 
on these shores should take the town shape as that an apple- 
seed planted here should grow up an apple-tree ; just as 
inevitable that it should become more perfect here than else- 
where as that an apple-tree in the broad country should be 
larger and richer than in the cramped and darkened city. 



44 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

The operation of this fundamental idea in the growth and 
development of our own town is to be traced on every page of 
its records. As soon as the Colony, which at first was only 
a single extended town, became too large for the meeting of 
all its freeholders in Boston (that is, about 16G4), Ipswich, in 
common with its other settlements, began the direct manage- 
ment of its own affairs,! ^^^ people coming together from time 
to time in a local meeting formally called, wliere each citizen, 
irrespective of wealth or station, had the same right as every 
other to speak and vote on all matters which came before it, 
— the most perfect democracy, with the single exception of 
its sex limit, that is possible on earth. And the town thus 
organized became at once a vital unit in the body politic, 
acting not only on its special local interests, but on the larger 
ones which it had as a part of the Colony, making its deputies 
at the General Court only the agents of its carefully expressed 
will at home, and joining heartily with the other towns in 
the struggle then impending against the tyranny of the mother- 
country. 

Its history in this respect is exceedingly honorable. As 
early as 1685 it voted to a man that it did not want the 
colonial charter surrendered to Charles II. of England. In 
1687, under the lead of its citizens, John Wise, then minister 
at Chebacco, John Appleton, John Andrews, Robert Kinsman, 
William Goodhue, and Thomas French, — six names which de- 
serve to be immortal, — it voted to resist the tax of a penny 
on a pound which Andros, the royal governor, had levied upon 
it, because, as the record says, it " infringed their liberty as 

1 A most important and delicate step in the history of all the early towns of 
Massachusetts, • — the evolution of the original homogeneous citizenship of our 
political solar system into its separate municipal worlds, • — and as scientifically 
beautiful as -when our physical earth went through a similar process. It dif- 
ferentiated the popular government, made it partly democratic and partly rep- 
resentative, or republican ; was a normal phase in the development of our 
national Constitution ; and the fact that it took place so readily and easily, and 
that the towns took charge of their own affairs so smoothly and wisely, shows 
how thoroughly politics, even then, had got into our New England blood, and 
how plainly our government, and indeed all government, is a natural evolution 
rather than a deliberate manufacture. 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 45 

free English subjects of liis Majesty, and tlie statute law that 
no taxes should be levied upon his subjects without the con- 
sent of an Assembly chosen by the freeholders for assessing 
the same;" for which vote its instigators were imprisoned 
and fined by the governor, — a vote a hundred years before 
the days of James Otis, yet which embodies almost exactly the 
great fundamental principle of the Eevolution, so early out of 
this little town had reached the hand which defied the King 
of England on his throne, and before which at last all thrones 
are to go down. In 1755 it instructed its representative, 
Dr. John Calef, to do all in his power to maintain the charter- 
rights of the Colony against the encroachments of the Eng- 
lish Parliament ; for disobeying which, a little later, he was 
promptly rebuked, and another man, Michael Farley, with 
more of the true town spirit, put in his place. Its records all 
through the stormy period of the Eevolution fairly bristle 
with patriotic votes, — the ordering that tea, " that pernicious 
weed," as it is called, should not be sold or used within its 
limits ; the pledging the lives and fortunes of its inhabitants 
to support the Continental Congress in declaring the Colo- 
nies independent of Great Britain ; and the repeated raising 
of money and troops with which to carry on the war. And 
since tlie recognition of the independence which it thus 
helped to secure, and the formation of the Federal Constitu- 
tion which it voted to accept, down to our own times, when 
again and again it raised its quota of troops for the Union 
war, it is the town as a town that has shown itself a vital 
part of the state and the nation. 

And how powerfully has all this reacted on the place itself! 
Its annual meetings for two hundred and fifty years have 
been its people's great school of citizenship. In the State 
House at Boston and in the Capitol at Washington, everything 
is necessarily done for the people and by their representatives ; 
but here, and here alone, the people are brought face to face 
with their rights and duties, and made to decide upon them 
in their original capacity. Giving each man a voice and 
vote on all public questions has interested each one, as uoth- 



46 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

ing else could, in their study. Public spirit has been devel- 
oj)ed ; and each man, while taught more and more to respect 
his own manhood, has been taught more and more to submit 
to tlie will of the majority, — two things equally essential in 
a true republic. Governor Andrew, somewhat derogatively, 
called our soldiers, when they went down to Bull llun at the 
beginning of the civil war, "a collection of town-meetings." 
And such, doubtless, they were. But the town-meetings in 
the end conquered the plantations. They went in at Bull 
Run, but they came out at Appomattox Court House ; and we 
are a free country to-day very largely because our soldiers had 
had for generations the town-meeting training, had had that 
personal interest in its safety incorporated into their very 
blood, which in the long-run is mightier for its defence than 
any military discipline. There is no other organization which 
can take their place, no city charter, however needful it may 
be for large communities, which is not in some degree a sepa- 
ration of the people from the direct management of their 
municipal affairs, — a loss, therefore, of political training, and 
a source of political corruption. And so long as New Eng- 
land would keep its chief glory, the nation its most powerful 
safeguard, and liberty its oldest and surest embodiment, we 
shall honor, preserve, and magnify our town organizations, 
and with them, as their very life-centre, our town-meetings. 

V. But, with every person a sovereign and a legislator, it 
is evidently needful that every person shall have some edu- 
cation, so naturally do all these great factors go togetlier, and 
equally evident that the public in some capacity must pro- 
vide its means. It is a necessity which Ipswicli recognized 
at a very early date. AVithin two years after its incorporation, 
it started a grammar-school, voting lands for its support, and 
appointing feoffees for its management ; and this institution, 
aided by annual appropriations and by the generous Manning 
gifts of 1874, has developed into our magnificent High School 
of to-da}^ — one of the oldest in the country, and with a 
record equally long of noble service. Six years later, so early 



HISTORICAL ADDEESS. 47 

that the children on their way to it had to be protected from 
the wolves, it voted that there should be an English free 
school — a slip from the tree of knowledge, doubtless at first 
very slender and imperfect, but out of which, nourished 
in later years by the State, has grown our whole system of 
common schools, one of New England's chiefest glories to-day, 
and as truly a part of the town as its houses and its hills. 
Fifty years ago, opening in 182G, its famous Young Ladies' 
Seminary was started, a pioneer in the cause of female educa- 
tion, whicli, under its able teachers, sent forth for years, not 
only thousands of pupils over the world at large, but a sweet, 
refining influence of priceless value all through the town 
itself And then, from the very start, its citizens took an 
active interest in collegiate education. During the first fifty 
years after its settlement, it had not less than thirty-eight of 
its sons graduate at Harvard ; and one of the most touching 
things in its records is the fact that in 1644 eacli of its 
families gave one peck of corn to Harvard University, and 
that in 1681 it put nineteen pounds' worth of grain on board 
of John Dutch's sloop, bound to Cambridge, for the same 
noble purpose — so early, in default of money, did the farmers 
here use the seed of the soil, garnered with their own hard 
hands, out of which to raise an institution of learning. It is 
worthy of notice, also, that the close connection of the schools 
with the town's very life was at the beginning fully recog- 
nized. The selectmen w^ere especially enjoined to see that 
the children were taught to " understand the capital laws of 
their country; " and the reason given for making their support 
a public burden was that " skill in the tongues and liberal 
arts is necessary for the well-beiug of a commonwealth." It 
is well for us to keep tbis original purpose, too often forgotten, 
still in mind. Our pul)lic schools were instituted first of all, 
not to make scholars, or Christians, or business men, but to 
make citizens. It is the only ground on which their support 
can be fairly exacted from all religions and all people. And, 
no matter what else they teach, they will do their full 
work as a factor of the town and the state, only when their 



48 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

foremost study is the laws of the land, and when their fruit 
from year to year is the golden one of every boy and girl out 
of them a patriotic, intelligent, and public-spirited citizen. 

VI. But, while giving their due place to these higher ele- 
ments in the building-up of a community, it will not do to 
forget one that both religion and philosophy have often de- 
spised and overlooked, yet wliicl^ has more to do with some 
parts of its growth than all others, and that is its BUSINESS. 
John Winthrop relates, in his " History of New England," that 
a white man, being inquired of by an inquisitive Indian as to 
what are the first principles of a commonwealth, replied, " Salt 
is the first principle ; for by means of it we keep our flesh and 
fish to have it ready when it is needed, whereas you, for the 
want of it, are often ready to starve. A second principle is 
iron ; for thereby we fell trees, build houses, and till our land. 
A third is ships ; for by them we send away such commodities 
as we have to spare, and bring home such as we lack." — 
" Alas ! " said tlie Indian, " then I fear lue shall never be a 
commonwealth ; for we can neither make salt, iron, or ships." 
And Cotton Mather also tells the story, in his " Magnalia," 
that when a Puritan minister addressed a congregation of 
Marblehead fishermen, and exhorted them to get religion, 
otherwise the main end of tlieir planting the wilderness 
woidd be lost, one of the fishermen spoke up and said, "You 
are mistaken, sir, you think you are preaching to the people 
of the Bay ; but the main end of our planting Marblehead is 
to catch fish." The two answers are both significant. Salt, 
iron, and ships, with the other material things they represent, 
are, beyond question, one of the corner-stones of the Common- 
wealth ; and among all the grand religious motives which 
animated our fathers in coming to America, it is not to be 
ignored, and not at all to their -discredit, that many of them 
came largely to transact business, and to get here on earth an 
honest living. Money was put into their enterprises then 
with the hope of gain, the same as into stock companies now. 
Eev. John White was himself one of the shareholders in the 



HISTOKICAL ADDEESS. 49 

Massachusetts Company. Higginson and Skelton were paid 
to come over at the rate of forty pounds a year. With religion 
at the core, fisheries and fur were held out on either side as 
inducements in filling up their ranks. Ministers, turkeys, 
salt-makers, wheelwrights, seed-grain, pewter plates, brass 
ladles, quart-measures, hymn-books, and Bibles are among 
the items that composed the cargo of the "Arbella." The 
whole thing was conducted, not as a wild fanaticism, but on 
sound business principles, had its lofty Puritan sails reaching 
on high to catch the airs of the spirit-world upheld below 
with a ballast of sturdy English common sense. And it was 
this shrewd business energy of the early colonists, often lost 
sight of by their eulogists, as if somehow it was inconsist- 
ent with their exalted spiritual motives, — this, not less 
than their religious zeal, which made their undertaking a 
final success, 

Ipswich seems at first to have shared fully in this business 
spirit. Houses were rapidly put up. Johnson speaks of 
them in 1646 as "very faire-built with pleasant gardens." 
Its rich soil opened to the sunlight was made, like the good 
ground of Scripture, to bring forth abundantly. The fishing 
business, "the apostles' own calling," as King James had 
piously named it, was carried on here, the same as elsewhere, 
very largely and lucratively; the incident being told, that 
the approaching settlers, while becalmed off the coast, on the 
"Arbella," "caught sixty-seven cod in two hours, some of them 
a yard and a half long and a yard round " — such was the 
tendency of fish even then, and on the sober Puritans, to 
excite the imagination. Clams appeared on the scene at a 
very early date, their digging being then, as often since, the 
one last ditch into which poverty could always retreat before 
yielding to starvation. Shipbuilding was soon started, both 
here and at Chebacco; mills were erected on the river for 
sawing lumber, and grinding grain ; various branches of 
manufacture were entered upon ; and a profitable trade in 
furs was opened with the Indians. One of the great diffi- 
culties encountered by all the early colonists in conducting 

4 



50 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

business was a lack of currency. This was shrewdly obviated 
in their dealings with the red men by the deliberate manufac- 
ture of wampum out of shells, the first fiat money probably 
ever known on the Continent, and a very early instance of 
Yankee ingenuity ; but in dealing with each other they had 
to employ bullets, divided coin, bills of credit, and very 
largely farm-produce. 

Under the influence of this active business spirit the town 
for seventy years developed rapidly both in prosperity and 
population. As early as 1G39 the curious vote appears on its 
records, " that it refuse to receive Humphrey Griffin as an 
inhabitant, the town being full ; " which means, however, not 
that it had no more room for Humphrey's body, but that all 
its land had been taken up. In forty years its population 
had increased to fourteen hundred. During the Eevolution 
it was forty-five hundred. In 1670 it was spoken of, side by 
side with Boston, as "one of our maritime towns;" and at the 
end of its first hundred years its county valuation was second 
only to that of Salem. Then followed its long period of 
stagnation — business dead, commerce fled, houses dilapi- 
dated, and the great body of its people crusted over with 
conservatism, and content simply with hard work to earn 
their daily bread, till finally the chief thing that poetry and 
business could say of it, even with their combined effort, 
was — 

" In Agawam, a wondrous place 

For knitting socks and bobbin-lace, 

For river curving through the town, 

Where alewive nets scoop up and down, 

Feeding a factory, and distils, 

And saw, and grist, and fulling mills." 

It was a state of things wliich lasted till the end of its 
second hundred years. Then came the railroad-train skil- 
fully flanking the bar to commerce Nature had placed at the 
mouth of its river, and opening a new artificial port on dry 
land right at its heart; then with it all the wonders of 
modern discovery and invention, sending into its veins their 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 51 

quickening life. And to-day, with two hundred and fifty 
years on its brow, it stands forth, not a city, not a com- 
mercial metropolis, not a large manufacturing place, but an 
active, healthy, up-witli-the-times New England town, radiant 
with all the combined beauty of ripened age and vigorous 
youth.i 

Is this failure of its early business promise wholly to be 
regretted ? A certain amount of trade is indeed necessary 
for a town's development ; but who will say that a line of 
huge factories along our river, with their smoke and din, their 
close corporations and their foreign workmen, neither having 
any interest or root in our traditions, their petty tyrannies 
of agent and overseer, and their wide contrasts of wealth 
and poverty, would have made it really a better town ? The 
true business of every community is not to make cloth or 
machinery, but to make manhood and womanhood ; not to raise 
wheat and corn, but to raise souls ; not to have commerce 
with Europe or Asia alone, but with all the realms of thought 

1 The recent outward growth of the town is indicated somewhat by the 
following statistics, showing that it is not spasmodic or over rapid, but normal 
and healthy : — 

Its population in 1860 was 3,349 ; in 1870, 3,674 ; in 1880, 3,699 ; in 
1884, about 3,900. 

Its number of voters in 1860 was 714 ; in 1870, 786 ; in 18S0, 877. 

Its taxable valuation of real and personal estate was in 1860, $1,332,719 ; 
in 1870, $1,632,488 ; in 1884, $1,961,545. 

Its taxable valuation of real estate alone, a much better indication of actual 
growth, was, in 1860, $932,597 ; in 1870, $1,125,841 ; in 1884, $1,494,372. 

Its money raised for town expenses was, in 1860, $10,483.19 ; in 1870, 
$16,939.30 ; in 1884, $23,664.76. 

Its tax-rate for 1860 was $8.15 per thousand ; for 1870, $14.50 per thou- 
sand ; for 1884, $13.50 per thousand. 

But its most striking and valuable recent growth has been in the public 
spirit of its citizens and in the change of its policy with regard to public im- 
provements. New streets have been laid out ; new schoolhouses built, and 
two new bridges thrown across the river. Its town-hall has been remodelled 
into a spacious and commodious edifice ; its ancient graveyard enlarged and 
beautified into what will prove one of the loveliest cemeteries of the country ; 
a new ambition aroused to make private premises contribute to the good look 
of the town ; and the common talk of the people has become that of pride and 
hopefulness in its prospects and its possibilities. 



52 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

and life. It is only a varied industry, only a business which 
appeals to all the faculties and powers of our nature, only 
churches and schools, pleasant homes and beautiful scenes, 
blended with factories and workshops, which can accomplish 
these higher results. And an industry of this kind Ipswich 
has always had. Even in its darkest days, even in its times 
when it has sent forth little grain and cloth into the world, it 
has sent forth richly its men and women. All its natural 
advantages are in this direction. The unmarred beauty of 
its stream will turn larger mills, and weave finer textures,^ 
than its polluted aud dammed-up waters ever can ; the tides 
of learning and civilizatiou sweeping along its shores bring it 
a commerce that no sand-bar between its wharves and the sea 
can shut out : improvements that offer rest and refreshment to 
weary workers out of the crowded city prove more profitable 
even by the money standard than those which attract to it 
only drudgery and toil. Use tliese advantages ; build it up, 
not as a huge factory, but as a pleasant home, — and then, 
though its boys and girls may leave it a while for more active 
scenes of labor, they will come back to it in after-years as to 
a loving mother, eager to lay their gains at its feet, and their 
ashes at last in its dust. 

VII. Mentioning the citizens it has raised up and sent abroad 
brings up inevitably the thought of those who have served it 
on battlefields — of how far they have been an element in its 
growth. It seems at first glance as if the men who are made 
SOLDIEES must necessarily be a lost force to the world, and as 

1 The town is peculiarly ricli in legendary lore, almost every locality in it 
being associated with some tradition, — not all so romantic as the stoiy which 
gave its name to Heartbreak Hill, or so fantastic as the one connected with the 
footprints on the rock in front of the First Parish Meeting-house, but all with 
a savor of the soil and helping to show that the town has had something in 
its scenery to quicken the imaginative as well as the industrial faculty. They 
are legends too much a matter of detail to be more than alluded to here ; but, 
when our full forthcoming history of Ipswich is written, it is hoped that they 
will all be gathered into it as illustrating the character of our ancestors hardly 
less than their actual deeds, and as affording the atmosphere through which 
alone many of its real events can be properly seen. 



HISTORICAL ADDEESS. 53 

if the community which sent the most of them out of itself, 
especially if they were its bravest and best children, would 
be the one tliat in life's struggle would be the least likely to 
survive. All experience, however, shows that such is not the 
case. War, not less than peace, is one of the great forces of 
the world's social evokition ; the test of which can figlit the 
best, one of the ways of proving which is fittest for its work ; 
and though the slaughter of the brave and good on battle- 
fields is in some of its aspects a terrible loss, nevertheless it is 
only in proportion as a nation has the most of its children who 
are ready thus to die for it that it is able itself to live. 

It is a condition of survival of which Ipswich, like all the 
rest of onr old New England towns, has had ample experience. 
Strange as it may now seem, with the only sound of border 
strife two thousand miles away, it was once a frontier settle- 
ment, and indeed was seized and occupied at first as a mili- 
tary outpost and as a military necessity, — that of presenting a 
barrier against the incursions of Frenchmen and of the Tar- 
rantine Indians from tlie East. Surrounded with savage foes, 
its inhabitants, for a hundred years, never lay down to sleep 
at night without preparations to rise up before morning to 
defend their lives, never rose up in the morning without 
possibilities of lying down before night in the sleep of death 
as protectors of their homes. Its first houses were all built 
with portholes through their overhanging second floors, out of 
which to run their guns. The meeting-house was literally a 
watch-tower. The sentinel on "the hill of Zion" Avithin, 
sounding the alarm against sin, was offset by a sentinel at 
the door without, ready to sound the alarm against Indians. 
Not only was every man trained to arms, but, by a vote 
found on the town-records in 1648, all the children ten years 
old and upwards were ordered to be " exercised with small 
guns, half-pikes, and bows and arrows." While the settlement 
was yet only four years old, it sent out twenty-three of its 
soldiers in the war against the Pequots. Seven of its number 
were slain in the famous battle at Muddy Brook ; three killed 
and twenty-three wounded in the victorious fight with King 



54 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

Philip at Narraganset Swamp. It was represented in all the 
o-reat expeditious against Canada during the King William, 
French and Indian, and Queen Anne wars ; shed its blood 
at Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Cape Breton, and at the daring 
sie"-e of Louisburg. It went into the lievolutiouary struggle 
with all its heart, mind, soul, and strength. The spirit with 
which it was animated was well evinced by the reply of Mrs. 
Holyoake, one of its old ladies, when asked to have some of 
her beautiful oak-wood cut down to be used in making salt- 
petre, " It is for liberty : take as much of it as you want." 
Money, men, and supplies were voted again and again with- 
out stint ; and from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, on the land and 
on the sea, some of its soldiers were in its every fight. And 
when at last, after long days of peace, its Union war broke 
out, and the issue was not of selfish liberty alone, but of 
humanity, and of liberty to the slave, and of loyalty to the 
kingdom of God, it soon showed that the blood of the sires 
was in the sons, and answered with three hundred and forty- 
seven men and witli fifty-one lives its own share of the 
question as to whether New England still could fight. 

Who now shall say that this long list of patriotic soldiers, 
heroic deeds, and sacrificed lives, running through eight 
generations, has added nothing to our town's diviner life? 
Who say that liberty is not dearer, our every institution 
richer, the very soil on which we stand the more precious, 
for every blow they struck, every pang they suffered, every 
ruby drop they offered up ? Who say that the shaft on 
yonder hill, bearing the names of the last ones on the long 
roll who pressed to the battle's awful front, and suggestive of 
all the rest, does not blend harmoniously with the church- 
spire, the schoolhouse, the market, the liome, and these 
ancient hills, as a worthy factor of our fair old toM'u ? Sainted 
band ! we cannot stand witli uncovered heads by all your 
graves to-day in the redeemed South, along the Canada line, 
by Champlain's limpid wave, and beneath the deep blue sea ; 
cannot summon your visible forms to join with us in the 
festivities of this natal hour ; cannot, amid the gathered dust 



IIISTOEICAL ADDEESS. 55 

of years, decipher all your names : but we stand with un- 
covered souls beside your patriotic deeds, hail you as fellow- 
citizens still in thought's undying realm, and behold in all 
these institutions around us the impress of something more 
truly yours than any outward name. Among the great com- 
pany of the town's departed builders rising above us to the 
inner vision, tier after tier, through the dim encircling years, 
— Avise scholars, holy divines, saintly women at the shrine of 
home, and faithful toilers in the shop and field, — we give to 
you, red-handed though you are, a foremost place. And in 
the light of your deeds, and by the breath of your example, we 
pledge ourselves, do we not, we its living, to keep our town 
worthy of you its dead ? 

" For the place 
Where shining souls have passed imbibes a grace 
Beyond mere earth : the sweetness of their fames 
Leaves in the soil its unextinguished trace, 
And penetrates our lives with nobler aims." 

VIII. But, while war preserves a community from without, 
there is another and sweeter force which holds it together 
from within, — one that unifies and co-ordinates all its other 
parts, and deprived of which it would be like the limbs of a 
body without its ligaments, or of a tree without its sap ; and 
that is its social life. Men are made in their very nature to 
live in communities. There are ties and necessities older even 
than our Aryan blood, as old as the race itself, which tend to 
draw them together. They cannot be complete in themselves, 
cannot show all that they are capable of, any more than tlie 
parts of a watch can, except through mutual contact and inter- 
course. And it is tliis social instinct which not only lies at 
the basis of the state and tlie town, but operates all through 
to give them grace and polish, and is the final factor in 
their evolution. We are apt to think of our Puritan ancestors 
as altogether cold, rigid, and formal ; apt to look on them as 
the fresh leaves of a tree might on its dark limbs beneath, nr 
the green blades of grass on its buried roots, — as being always 
what they are now, the dim, bloodless, unmoving figures that 



56 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

we see them on the dry historic page. We need continually 
to remind ourselves that they were liuman beings, full of 
warm human nature, and that once they were moving about 
these streets, clothed in flesh and blood, and as full of weak- 
nesses, passions, interests, and affections, and of rich and 
bounding life, as we are to-day. Who, for instance, can read 
the entry lighting up the old records, of how Daniel Blake in 
1660 was fined five pounds " for making love to Edmund 
Bridge's daughter without her parents' consent," and not see, 
that, though his age was Puritan, Daniel's heart was very 
human ? Women were evidently as much given to dress and 
fashion then as they ever have been since ; for, the same year 
that Ipswich was incorporated, the General Court passed a 
law against " slashed apparel, great sleeves, gold and silver 
lace, knots of ribbon, and double ruffs." And Ward says, in 
his " Simple Cobbler of Agawam," " I honor the woman that 
can honor herself with her attire, — a good text always de- 
serves a fair margent ; but when I hear a nugiperous Gentle- 
dame inquire what dress the Queen is in this week, what the 
nudiustertian fashion of the court is, with eggQ to be in it 
with all haste, whatever it be, I look at her as the very giz- 
zard of a trifle, the product of the quarter of a cipher, the 
epitome of nothing, fitter to be kickt, if she were of a kickable 
substance, than either honored or liumored." Ipswich life in 
its early day was the very opposite of being hard, barren, and 
repulsive, indeed, judging by the glimpses we get of it now 
and then, must have been pre-eminently ricli, cultivated, and 
refined. Ward himself, instead of being altogether a sombre 
Puritan, had inscribed on his mantelpiece not only " sobrie, 
juste, and pie," but also " Isete," joyously, as his life motto, — 
surely a noble one for any age. Winthrop, in his Journal, 
describes a visit here and a home gathering in 1658, about 
which he says, " My cozens all three were in healtli, and as 
merry as very good cheere and Ipswich frends could make 
them." John Dunton is not always a reliable authority ; 
but the description he gives of his visit to the town in 1685 ; 
its beautiful meeting-house, orchards, and gardens ; its lively 



HISTOKICAL ADDEESS. 57 

circulation of the news, " when a stranger arrives there 't is 
quickly known to every one ;" his hospitable entertainment at 
Mrs. Stewart's, where his sleeping-apartment " was so noble, 
and its furniture so suitable to it, that he doubts not but even 
the king himself has oftentimes been content with worser 
lodging ; " his excursion to Eowley, where he found " a great 
game of football going on between the Eowleyites and the 
young men of another town, played with their bare feet; 
and his talk with Mrs. Comfort, as they picked tlieir path on 
horseback through the vast woods, fringed with flowers, and 
musical with birds, on such themes as Platonic love, — is 
full of picturesque beauty, some of it almost a page out of 
Spenser's " Faerie Queene." With women in society like 
Eebekah Symonds, Anne Bradstreet, Martha Winthrop, and 
Patience Denisou, and men like Governor Winthrop, Deputy 
Symonds, General Denison, Dr. Pirmin, the Eevs. Ward 
and Hubbard, occasionally Judge Sewall, and a score of 
others, life could not have been otherwise than elegant, social, 
and cultivated. They had all been brought up in good Eng- 
lish society, and knew its manners and customs. The press- 
ure of the great wilderness around them, and of a common 
danger and enterprise, must have brought them very near 
together. Politics and religion were always to be discussed. 
New ideas sprang up as abundantly as weeds on the new 
uncovered soil. There was that Anne Hutchinson, coming 
along once in a while, with her radical heresies and her fresh 
womanly enthusiasm, to stir them up. The new pages of 
nature, and the ever old interests of birth and love and mar- 
riage and death, had to be talked over. John Dutch's sloop, 
or a traveller now and then from Boston, brought them into 
contact with life there ; and occasionally a A^essel from across 
the seas, with letters from friends, and news of great political 
convulsions, and the latest gossip about fashions and court, 
thrilled anew their common English nerves, and gave them 
the topics of many a loving heart-talk. Tlie charm of that 
early picnic life died away in the generations that followed 
and in their hard struggle for existence ; but the social spirit 



58 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

went into other forms, less elegant and English perhaps, 
but not less real. Sundays and town-meetings brought them 
all together. Weddings and funerals were celebrated for a 
long time with great pomp ; rum and wine flowing freely, 
and the minister receiving innumerable presents in the 
form of rings and gloves, — one divine, it is said, twenty-nine 
hundred pairs in a ministry of thirty-two years. Huskings 
and house-raisings brought all the neighbors together, for 
a helping hand to begin with, and a merry-making after- 
wards. Election-day came once a year, with its famous cake 
and its chance for the small boy. Training-days, with their 
music, banners, and parade, relieved the awful grimuess 
of war. With the material harvest all gathered from the 
fields, Thanksgiving brought its gathering of the household's 
human products from far and wide, to rejoice with feast and 
story under the old roof-tree again. Xow and then a distin- 
guished visitor came from abroad, and everybody turned out, 
with a spokesman at their head, to give him welcome ; as, for 
instance, when Lafayette made his visit, and General Farley, 
the grand old soldier, in his reverence and excitement did 
him double honor by taking off, as he received him, not only 
his hat, but liis wig also. And then, beyond all else, was the 
intercourse they had with eacli other simply as townsmen and 
neighbors ; the bows and hand-shakings and good-mornings 
in the street ; the remarks about the weather and the crops 
across the garden-fence, and the talk in the horse-sheds and 
at the church-doors on Sunday about the price of oats and 
the points of doctrine, the children that were down with the 
measles and the candidates that were up for office, — little 
things in themselves, and very different from wliat the 
fashionable world calls society, but all helping to shape tlie 
townly character, to build up its citizens into a living unity, 
and to make a love for it in all after-years one of the corner- 
stones in the love of country. 

Such, friends, are some of the forces concerned in the 
evolution of a ISTew England town, such the ones that have 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 59 

operated to produce our own loved home. To many of us 
the review of them is a matter, not only of historical study, 
but of keen personal interest. The men and women we 
catch a glimpse of are the ancestral stems on which our 
being has blossomed ; the scenes and events they acted in, 
the ones l)y which our characters, our principles, our lives, 
have been shaped : and as we look at them, especially at a 
feature and a trait here and there, it seems almost as if we 
had dropped the plummet of memory below our individual 
being, down through these other generations, into the mystic 
personality of our race. Tiie images brought up are indeed 
but for a moment. The great wilderness of wood, the little 
Puritan town planted in it as a seed, the unshackled river, 
and the quaint furniture of the olden time, materialized to 
our vision by the medium of the hour, melt away, even wliile 
we look at them, into the mist of the past. And Masconno- 
met and his Indian braves, John Winthrop and his venerable 
compeers, Madame Symonds and her coterie of friends in 
their rich brocades, and Colonel Wade and his Eevolutionary 
heroes, stately in their continental uniform, summoned out 
of their tombs by the magic wand of memory, march back 
again, even while we speak, to their silent dust. But they 
leave the impress of themselves, leave the print of their 
subtle feet, all over the living town ; remind us how largely 
and nobly its builders are of the past, and its beauty not a 
surface glow, but a solid depth. And who can look at their 
shadowy forms even for tliis brief moment, who think of 
the whole-souled men and women, the toiling hands, the 
brave minds, the warm hearts, the lifted prayers, and under 
these the great historic forces that for two hundred and fi'fty 
years have gone into the building of our town, and not 
have a deeper appreciation of its worth, and a warmer love 
for its every part ? Because the}' have not resulted in a 
great metropolis, because our wealth and numbers for so long 
a time have been almost stationary, it does not follow that 
they have been in any sense lost forces. The evolution of a 
town is like that of a leaf on a tree, — not for its own sake 



60 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

alone, but for tliat of the state, the nation, and the civiliza- 
tion of which it is a part. Its juices were meant to go, not 
into its own stem and veins merely, but into the limbs of 
new institutions and into the fruit of enlarged ideas ; and, 
when the autumn comes, to know what has been evolved out 
of it, you must look at the whole social and political tree on 
which it stands. Who shall say that Ipswich has not per- 
formed worthily this function of a town ? Its life-blood has 
gone forth into our whole broad land. Liberty is larger, 
civilization richer, humanity farther along in its upward way, 
because, side by side with ten thousand others, it has done 
so well its work. And waving in the summer breeze, and 
glistening in the light of the August sun, the evolution it 
shares in, richer than any individual growth could possibly 
be, is that of the freest, healthiest, and most thrifty nation 
that stands to-day on the soil of earth. And can it have 
any worthier ambition than to go on in the same direction 
for the years that are to come, seeking not so much to change 
in size or character as to imfold in completeness ? With its 
churches, schools, and library, its combined beauty of hill 
and dale, winding river, and gray old sea, its grand historic 
traditions flowing from the past, and its close connection 
with all that is richest and best in the civilization of the 
present, I know of no spot where life can be spent more 
sweetly, more worthily, and, if not in material gains, yet in 
the soul's larger wealth, more richly, than on its soil. And 
when two hundred and fifty more years shall have rolled 
away, and we who are here to-day shall sleep in its dust, and 
our names be counted among its ancient inhabitants, and our 
children's children celebrate its five hundredtli anniversary, 
I know of no better prayer for it than that, developing still 
out of its old Puritan root, and under these same forces, it 
may be then what it is now, only more completely, a 
CHARACTERISTIC NeW ENGLAND TOWN. 



MOTHER IPSWICH." 61 



President Haskell. — Ladies and gentlemen, 
the Committee find it necessary to curtail the ex- 
ercises at this place somewhat, and, in consequence 
of that arrangement, the music mentioned next on 
the programme will be omitted, and the singing of 
the hymn mentioned lower down on the programme 
will also be omitted. Your attention will only be 
asked to a poem, " Mother Ipswich," by one of her 
grandchildren, which will occupy but a short time, 
and will be read by Mr. Roland Cotton Smith. 



MOTHER IPSWICH. 

BY ONE OF HER GRANDCHILDREN.^ 

Throned on her rock-bound hill, comely and strong and free, 
She sends a daughter's greeting to Ipswich over the sea ; 
But she folds to her motherly heart, with welcome motherly sweet. 
The children home returning to sit at her beautiful feet. 

Fair is her heritage, fair with the blue of the bountiful sky ; 
Green to the white, warm sand, her biUowy marshes lie ; 
Her summer calm is pulsed with the beat of the bending oar 
Where the river shines and sleeps in the shadows of Turkey Shore. 

Down from the storied past tremble the legends still 

As the woe of the Indian maiden wails over from Heartbreak Hill, 

And, alas ! the unnamable footprint, and the lapstone dropped 

below — 
From places so pleasant, poor devil, no wonder he hated to go. 

1 Daughter of Hannah Stanwood, grand-daughter of Captain Isaac Stan- 
wood, of Ipswich. 



g2 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

Fair is my realm, saitli the Mother ; but fairest of all my domain, 
Are the sons I have reared and the daughters, sturdy of body and 

brain, 
Tender of heart and of conscience, ready, with flag unfurled. 
For service at home, or, if need be, to the uttermost bounds of the 

world. 

Never my bells of the morning fail to the morning air. 
With their summons of young minds to learning, with their sum- 
mons of all souls to prayer. 
Gracious yon pile where are stored me the treasures of thought to- 

<lay. 
More gracious my children who poured me their wealth of the far 

Cathay. 

Mourn your lost leader,^ my hamlet, sore needed, yet never again 

To mingle his words of wisdom in the wide councils of men ; 

Nor forget whose hand lirst plucked its secret from the Mountain 

King's stormy breast,^ 
And held up the torch of freedom over the great North-west. 

Thrilled to him, hearts of the people, whose eyes were a smoulder- 
ing fire, 
Whose voice to the listening multitude rang like an angel's lyre ; 
But I hear the trill of light laughter in thickets of featliery fronds, 
Where a little lad dares for white lilies the deep of Chebacco ponds.^ 

Best in the peace of God forever, man of good-will,'* 

Who gathered the healing of heaven in the sunshine of Sweet-Briar 

Hill: 
Far from the city's tumult, with my soft airs overblown, 
In my arms of love I hold him, a stranger, and yet mine own. 

1 Hon. Allen W. Dodge, of Hamilton. 

2 Rev. Manasseh Cutler, of Hamilton. 

3 Rufus Choate, of Essex. , ,. ,, * 

4 Rev. John Cotton Smith. D.D., rector of the Church of the Ascension, 

New York City. 



"mother IPSWICH." 63 

Where the footsteps of Maro wandered, where the waters of HeH- 

con flow, 
Where the cedars of Lebanon wave, where the path of a people 

should go, 
blessed blind eyes that see, from the wrong dividing the right,-^ 
Shed on the darkness of day the gleam of your radiant night ! 

And thou, Desire of the ligation, loved from the sea to the sea. 

High above stain as a star, still upward thy pathway be ! 

By thy blood of the stately Midland, by thy strength of the IN'orth- 

ern Pine, 
By the sacred fire bright on thy hearthstone, I name thee, and claim 

thee mine.^ 

Come to me, dear my children, from every land under the sun ; 
Nay, I feel by the stir of my spirit that all worlds are but one ; 
Na}^, I know by my quickening heart-throbs, they are gathering to 

my side. 
Veiled by God's grace with His glory, — the dead who have never 

died. 

Fathers, whose steadfast uprightness their sons through no time 

can forget, 
Mothers, whose tenderness breathes in many an old home yet, 
Hushed is the air for their coming, holy the light with their love : 
What shall the grateful earth pledge to the heaven above 1 

The best that we have to give, — loyalty stanch and pure 

To the land they loved and the God they served while the earth 

and heavens endure : 
We can bear to the future no greater than to us the past hath 

brought, — 
Faith to the lowliest duty, truth to the loftiest thought. 

1 Rev. John P. Cowles, of Ipswich. 

2 Hon. James G. Blaine, of Maine. 



64 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

The omitted hymn referred to above by the Presi- 
dent is here inserted : — 



ORIGINAL HYMN. 

BY THE REV. J. O. KNOWLES, D.D. 

Tune : Saint Ann^s. 

Great God, to Thee our song we raise 

For this auspicious hour, 
And sing the mercy of Thy ways, 

The wonders of Thy power. 

Back through the fading years we read 

The record of Thy care. 
And hear once more, in times of need. 

Our fathers' earnest prayer. 

Thy truth inspired them as they sought 

This land across the sea. 
And in their sturdy natures wrought 

The purpose to be free. 

We praise Thee that this holy flame 

In hearts is glowing still ; 
And we, their children, follow them 

To work Thy righteous will 

For us their toils rich fruitage yields 

Beneath a fairer sky, 
Where banners of their battlefields 

In prouder triumphs fly. 

Thy love has blessed the changing years 

With never-changing good. 
Until this beauteous town appears 

Where once their hamlet stood. 



I 



BENEDICTION 65 

For broader fields and richer gain, 

For these our brighter days, 
For more of light on heart and brain, 

We offer Theo our praise. 

Long may our town in beauty stand 

Close by the sounding sea : 
Grant to her sons Thy guiding hand 

In all the years to be. 



Peesident Haskell. — The Doxology will be sung, 
and the audience are requested to join therein. After 
that, the benediction will be pronounced. There 
will be given an intermission of twenty minutes 
before the opening of the tent for the dinner. 

The Doxology, " Praise God from whom all bless- 
ings flow," was sung by the audience accompanied 
by the baud. 

The following benediction was pronounced by the 
Rev. Julius W. At wood, rector of Ascension Memo- 
rial Church, Ipswich : — 

The peace of God, which passetli all understanding, keep 
your hearts and minds in the knowledge and love of God, and 
of his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord. And the blessing of God 
Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be 
amongst you, and remain with you always. Amen. 



THE DINNER 



A FTER tlie short recess announced by the Presi- 
■^~^ dent, about one thousand guests assembled for 
dinner. At two p.m. the divine blessing was invoked 
by the Rev. John Pike, D.D., of Rowley, and, after 
an hour spent in festivity and social converse, the 
President called the company to order, and said, — 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — Will you give your attention 
one moment. I shall not trespass upon your time in the 
presence of so many eminent guests whom you desire to hear ; 
but I must take this opportunity to bid you all a hearty wel- 
come to the town and to the festivities of the day, and to 
express the great gratification it must be to the people of this 
town to have such a manifestation of your interest in these 
exercises, and to thank you for your attendance upon this 
occasion. I will also invite you all to be here at the next 
centennial celebration, fifty years from to-day. It will un- 
doubtedly be the lot of some of you, perhaps of many, to 
attend at that time, and I assure all who shall then come 
that they will receive a cordial welcome. I now have the 
pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, of introducing to you the 
Ptev. T. Frank Waters, who has kindly consented to aid 
us in these exercises by announcing the sentiments to be 
submitted, and by eliciting, as we hope, responses from some 
of our eminent ^ruests. 



68 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

EEMARKS OF THE TOAST-MASTER, REV. T. FRANK 
WATERS. 

Mr. President, — In deference to the invitation thus ex- 
tended, and with due regard to the wisli of the Committee 
that has made such provision for this festival, I accept the 
office assigned me, but for which I find I have neither wit 
nor wisdom. A certain debt of gratitude, however, rests 
upon me. Tliere is a tradition in my father's family, I 
know not how trustworthy, to the effect, that, when the 
British occupied Boston, my great-grandparents, rather than 
live under the British flag, left that town, and journeyed 
eastward ; and that it was somewhere within the borders of 
this old town that my grandfather first saw the light. We 
have been waiting one hundred years to make some recogni- 
tion of the hospitality thus tendered ; and, if any slight act 
I may do to-day may serve to show our gratitude, I shall be 
most happy. I am reminded, too, that the office of toast- 
master for such a banquet is very much like a preface of a 
book, — something for use rather than for beauty ; something 
simple and plain, and not intended for the critic's judgment, 
and, in the estimation of most persons, best when brief. I 
trust by brevity to merit your approval, if by nothing else. 

As we turn back the page of history, we find that our wor- 
thy ancestors, in their many prayers and few festal gather- 
ings, were wont to make devout mention of their king. But 
we find already within them a marked jealousy of foreign 
rule ; and we may remember with gratitude that we have 
to-day the full flower of that which was then in the germ, 
when we at our festal gathering no longer pledge fealty to a 
king over seas, but wish health and prosperity to our own 
Eepublican President. I offer you, then, as the first senti- 
ment of this occasion, 

" The President of the United States ; " 

and in the absence of the President I will ask the band to 
play " The Star-spangled Banner." 



GOVERNOR Robinson's address. 69 

The Toast-MxVster. — We have a record that at 
a very early date the worthy governor of this State, 
John Winthrop, showed his regard for this old town, 
in wliich his son lived, by a journey hither through 
the wilderness on foot ; and the regard Ipswich bore 
the old State has ever been beyond question by her 
ready response to every demand made upon her both 
in war and in peace. I give you, therefore, as the 
second sentiment of this occasion, 

" The Commomvealth of Massachusetts,'''' 

and would invite to respond to this toast his Excel- 
lency the Governor. 

ADDRESS OF HIS EXCELLENCY, GEORGE D. ROBmSON, 
GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — To all the children and de- 
scendants of the good old town of Ipswich she gives to-day 
a welcome from her heart. By her firesides, in her sacred 
l^laces, amid familiar scenes, there she bids her chosen ones 
retm^n to drink anew at the fountains of inspiration that 
hallow and endear and ennoble home, society, state, and 
country. 

Personally I cannot of myself claim to be a descendant 
of this honored town. My memory has failed me, my re- 
search has proved fruitless, and I have been struggling all 
the time since my foot stepped upon the soil this morning, 
to think of some great-great-great-grandmother that might 
possibly have lived here, or of some cousin in the nineteenth 
degree upon wdiom I could call in case the Committee had 
not so kindly taken care of me here to-day. But that failing 
me, and it being my official privilege and duty to speak for 
Massachusetts, I desire to say to you that the old Common- 
wealth herself comes back to the town of Ipswich to-day as 
one of the town's children. She is younger than Ipswich 



70 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

herself. We speak of our ancient Commonwealth. Why, 
the Massachusetts that we know, that is founded upon the 
principles expressed in her Constitution wliich has been her 
abiding guide for these many years, — that Commonwealth 
is nearly one hundred and fifty years the junior of the town 
of Ipswich. This community, and others like it, scattered 
all over the Province and through the Colony, as it was then 
known, under the different charters, controlled by governors 
of royal appointment — these communities embraced the 
best inspirations of the people that dwelt in tlieui ; and 
gradually they came, by the development of the ideas that 
underhiy tlieir theory, into the State that we call our own. 

Look at it. What concern have we as a Slate to-day that 
was not in the control of the towns two hundred years ago ? 
They took care of all the matters of expenditure ; they pro- 
vided seats in the meeting-house for the people ; they even 
selected the leader of the choir, and said who should be the 
singers in the praise of the Lord ; they took care of tlie 
schools and tlie highways and the poor; they looked after 
the morals and the behavior of everybody ; they raised troops, 
and equipped them ; they stood on guard against foes here 
and foes abroad. It was a State then in its infancy. And 
those early inhabitants left their impress upon the institu- 
tions that now we recognize as the expression of the Com- 
monwealth of JMassachusetts. Though many of the customs 
and ideas of that time excite our curiosity, and provoke 
sometimes our ridicule, for all that, the people of tliat 
time were laying the foundations upon a solid basis. It has 
not gone for nought that the people stood by the sabbath in 
that olden time. It will never fail this Commonwealth to 
adhere to the same principles for a quarter of a thousand 
years to come. 

It has been twice said to-day that one of my predecessors, 
Governor John Winthrop, walked all the way from Boston 
to Ipswich. Somehow or other there seemed to my mind 
to be a kind of intimation that I am a good way from John 
Winthrop ; that I did n't come down in the same way. But 



GOVEEN'OR Robinson's address. 71 

I have a very strong suspicion, that, if Governor John had 
had the Eastern Eaih'oad open, he would have bought a ticket 
on that line — unless the railroad company, with its usual gen- 
erosity, had offered him a chance to come for nothing. More 
than that, too ; the governor came down here on Saturday, 
and, finding that the old parish was in want of a minister, he 
proceeded the next day, in the quaint language of the time, 
" to exercise by the way of prophecy." And, since I have 
discovered that fact, I have been wondering how many more 
duties were to be put upon the Governor of Massachusetts. 
If he is to be called upon to travel overland, to imitate his 
good predecessor, and go Saturdays into every community 
where there is a meeting-house that has not a pastor, here and 
there, and exercise himself and the congregation the next 
day in the way of prophecy, candidates for the governorship 
will be less numerous than they are now ; and the only re- 
lief that I have personally for this year is, that, in searching 
history, I find that no one of my other predecessors has ever 
done any such thing. All the way down, after we leave 
Governor John Winthrop, including my immediate prede- 
cessor, nobody has ever done it. Now I submit to you, 
that considering all the wealth of intellect, the ability, the 
fertility, the ingenuity, that we have had in the guberna- 
torial chair, there is a possible excuse for the Executive 
to-day if he does not exercise himself on Sunday in the 
good old way. 

Not forgetting the principles that underlie good sound 
religion, the fathers took along a kindred development, — 
the development of intelligence, the making of a man in 
his own brain and mind all that it is possible for him to be. 
And so they gave us the free school early, — one of the earli- 
est in the country, perhaps the first, and it may be even 
the pioneer in the world. One's mind at once traces along 
down the marvellous line of growth in that direction. He 
sees the outgrowth, on the one hand and the other, in all the 
towns and throughout the State, until ]\Iassachusetts becomes 
known for her school system the world over, — known not 



72 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

alone by statistics, not by the adornment of the school- 
buildings, not by the attractiveness of the pupils, but in 
the expression of intelligence, the power that is seen in the 
faces, and manifested in the actions, of the men and women 
that are in this Commonwealth. And knowing how to stand 
by the principles of both, how to be religious and how to 
be also intelligent, they knew also how to be free. Liberty 
they would have ; and they counted every man and institu- 
tion and ofiicer an enemy to themselves that attempted to 
thwart their higli purpose. It has been narrated to you here 
how Governor Andros's taxation, or attempted taxation, was 
resisted by the seven men of this town, even to the point of 
fine and imprisonment on their part. And yet they staked 
their issue, their all, on the threshold, because they claimed 
their rights as citizens to have a part in the deliberations 
before they should impose rates upon themselves and their 
fellows fur payment. That was under King James II. ; that 
was in 1688 ; that was in this town. And do you know 
also, that across the water, in Old England, at the same time, 
— in the community from which this name was taken, in 
old Ipswich, — almost on the same day, the people of that 
parent-town were in mutiny and rebellion against that same 
king because of his encroachment upon their rights as Eng- 
lishmen ? You may well join hands to-day, — new Ipswich 
and old Ipswich, — and bid each other God speed in the 
better development of human liberty, and in tlie advance- 
ment of human rights. 

]\Iany glimpses that a man will take as he recounts the 
old history will be interesting. We cannot help stopping a 
moment to think of poor Joe Lane who stole the widow's 
Bible, and got fined fifteen shillings for it, which he was to 
give to the widow, by the way, and ten shillings more for 
lying about it. That is good wholesome doctrine. It was 
bad enough to steal the Bible ; but it was worse not to get 
the covers open, and find out that lying also was sinful. The 
magistrates at that time were very careful about such invas- 
ions of propriety. Then we learn that some citizen of this 



GOVERNOR ROBINSON'S ADDRESS. 73 

town, in the good old days, was sentenced to pay a fine of 
twenty shillings, or to be whipped, for too great familiarity 
with the devil. The historian does not tell us which course 
he preferred to take. If that had been stated, we should 
know what the citizens of Ipswich regard a good whippinof 
as worth. Some hill was named here to-day in the course of 
the discourse, — " Heartbreak," I believe that is it, — called 
by that romantic name because of the fate of a poor young 
man that was fined five pounds, and let off with four pounds, 
because he undertook to make love to a girl without askinor 
her parents' consent. I would he glad to be assured by the 
town-fathers to-day that the infiuence of that penalty upon 
the young men of Ipswich was so salutary and lasting that 
no one has ever transgressed from that time to now. 

But, ladies and gentlemen, I have no right, in considera- 
tion of your patience, as well as also of my own time, — the 
minute of my departure being quite near, — to wearv you 
with many more remarks. These scenes bring up sugges- 
tions which can never be met elsewhere. The old houses, 
many of them, stand ; the roads still run around the valleys 
and up the hills ; the river flows on to the sea ; the rocks are 
on and by the hills ; the birds are singing still ; the sun 
shines, the rain falls ; men, women, and children are here : 
and yet, as you pass the doors along the roads, the old faces 
are gone never to come again ; new faces look out to greet 
you. And, as you look forward to the time that shall come, 
you can see even these faces disappearing from the active 
stage of life, and imagine new forms, new faces, and new lives 
coming upon this scene to make the Ipswich of the coming 
time. It will indeed be well if he who shall stand here two 
hundred and fifty years hence to speak for Massachusetts, — 
if he, looking upon the history then completed, can say as 
well for the town as may be said now. It rests with the 
generation of to-day what the forward movement shall be. 
We make our history, not in centuries, but in days ; we live, 
not in multitudes and in communities, but in individual 
lives ; we carry the town and the state with ourselves and 



74 TEE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

by ourselves ; and, if the future shall not be so rich in prom- 
ise and so abundant in fruitage, it may be, perhaps, because 
we have been negligent in the present. 

Two hundred and lifty years from now we sliall be for- 
gotten ; but your visitor to-day, whom I represent, will be 
here. Massachusetts dies not, because she is in tiie livino- 
and endless life of her people. So, though all visitors shall 
be missing, though it may be only a tear on the grass that 
shall o\^ergrow the grave, though it may be a remote de- 
scendant that will call up the memory or the reference to 
the present, Massachusetts, in the prophecy of the present, 
will be here stronger, I take it, tlian now, broader and greater 
than to-day, — the Massachusetts of an advanced civiliza- 
tion, the exponent, I trust, of' a correct and high life, and of 
an enduring faith in all that makes for the development and 
advancement of men. 

I give you, " The Old Town of Ipswich." j\Iay she be 
for the two hundred and fifty years next to come as faithfuL 
to the principles of right, honor, and liberty, as she has been. 
in the past ; and her next celebration shall be as glorious as 
the present. 

The Toast-master. — I offer you as the next sen- 
timent on this occasion one that will come home to 
all your hearts, I am sure : — 

"John Winthrop, Jr., and tha Original Founders of the Town of I^JSivich." 

" So live the fathers in their sons ; 
Their sturdy faith be ours, 
And ours the love that overruns 
Its rocky strength with flowers." 

A kind Providence still spares an honored descendant 
of the old governor and his son, whom we had hoped 
to have had with us in person ; but in his absence I 
have received a letter, to which I ask your attention. 
It is from Hon. Robert C. Wixtiirop of Brookline. 



LETTER OF HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 75 

Brookline, Mass., Aug. 4, 1884. 

DEAPt Sir, — I pray you to present my grateful acknowl- 
edgments to the town of Ipswich for the invitation to be 
present as one of the guests of the town, at the two hundred 
and tiftieth anniversary of its incorporation. 

I have not forgotten the old record of my ancestor : " The 
Governor's son, John Winthrop, went with twelve more to be- 
gin a plantation at Agawam, after called Ipswicli." This was 
in March, 1633-34, and was followed by a hardly less interest- 
ing entry in his Journal on the following 3d of April : " The 
Governor went on foot to Agawam, and, because the people 
there wanted a minister, spent the sabbath with them, and ex- 
ercised by way of prophecy; and returned home the 10th." 

Two generations of my family were thus associated with the 
first beginnings of Ipswich. John AVinthrop, Jr., the founder 
of the town, was soon afterwards governor of the little Colo- 
ny on the Connecticut Eiver, under the charter of Lord Say 
and Sele and Lord Brooke, where he planted Saybrook. He 
was afterwards the founder of New London, and, having 
obtained the charter of Connecticut from Charles 11., was 
governor of that Colony for nearly seventeen years. But his 
ties to Ipswich were not soon severed. There he built a 
house, and resided there from time to time for several years ; 
and there was born his eldest son, commonly known as Fitz- 
John Winthrop, who was governor of Connecticut from 
1698 until his death, in 1707. 

It would afford me real pleasure to revive these old memo- 
ries by accepting the invitation of the town, and attending its 
festival on the 18th inst. : I would even come " on foot," as 
my ancestor did, and " exercise by the way of prophecy," if I 
were as young as he then was. But engagements and dis- 
abilities combine to render it impracticable for me to be with 
you, and I can only offer you my best wislies for the success 
of the occasion and the continued prosperity of the town of 
Ipswich. Believe me, dear sir, very faithfully yours, 

EobT C. Winthkop. 

George E. Farley, Esq., Sec'y of Committee. 



76 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

The Toast-master. — Another lineal descendant 
of the fathers of the town is present with us to-day, 
and I now take pleasure in inviting a response from 
the Hon. Leveeett Saltonstall. 

ADDEESS OF HON. LEVERETT SALTONSTALL. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — There are few 
men living, who by character and attainments so admirably 
illustrate the virtues and talents of their ancestors as the 
excellent gentleman whose letter has just been read. Would 
that he had felt able to be here to-day to add force to what 
he has wTitten in response to the sentiment, by his rare elo- 
quence ! — a duty for wbicli I so painfully feel my own insuf- 
ficiency, but which in his absence I consider it a high honor 
to be called upon to perform. And as Governor Winthrop 
with Sir rdchard Saltonstall came over in the " Arbella," and 
as their sons four or five years later came hitlier together to 
found this ancient town, so now my heart throbs with a thrill 
of fervent sentiment while following my honored friend in 
laying a small tribute npon the shrines of these good men 
and their co-workers. 

The sentiment carries us back two hundred and fifty years, 
to those admirable men and women from whom not we alone, 
nor New England, but thousands of the bravest and best 
throughout our great country, love to trace their blood and 
their virtues, whose piety, wisdom, and incredible courage 
laid deep tlie foundation of those twin columns of religion 
and civil liberty upon which so vast and majestic a temple 
has been reared. 

How should we rejoice, and, with gratitude all the more 
profound as the years roll on, celebrate these great anniver- 
saries and centennials, which recall to ns our fathers and 
mothers of former generations, and which so tend to strengthen 
the ties between the past and the present, to fill our hearts 
with thankfulness, and our minds with wonder, as we reflect 
on their trials and sufferings, their religious faith and zeal. 



ADDEESS OF HON. LEVERETT SALTONSTALL. 77 

as well as on their far-seeing and prudent management of 
public affairs ! They seem to have seen through the Ion"- 
vista of years, away ahead, the blossoming and fruiting of 
these great republican institutions which they here planted, 
and watered with their very life's blood. 

We are prone to picture to ourselves the early settlers as 
stern old Puritans, men of middle age, or older, who had laid 
aside with their youth the desire to enjoy the sweets of life, 
and who, from long forbearance, had lost the very faculty 
and sense of enjoying anything but a long sermon preached 
through the nose. But this is not so. There were many 
young men of gentle blood, educated at the universities, 
some owning estates in England. They brought with them 
their young wives, tenderly nurtured, and accustomed to all 
the refinements and luxuries of life, to nurse their babes to 
sleep, with the howling of wolves, and ofttimes the war- 
whoop of the savage, Indian, for a lullaby. 

Two centuries and a half is a long time to review ; but in 
many ways how near it seems to us ! 

I doubt if there be any people who have so reverently 
and so devoutly cherished the memory of their ancestry. 
Fireside traditions have been supplemented by anniversary 
discourses and sermons and by days of public thanksgiving, 
which have been observed from the first settlement. Few 
there are among those of New England extraction who do 
not feel this interest, for few there are who do not trace their 
descent from one or more of the first settlers. The late 
Colonel Thomas H. Perkins of Boston, whom I well recollect, 
used to relate that in his youth he had seen an old man who 
had conversed with Peregrine White, the first child born in 
the Plymouth Colony — one link only between the landing 
of the Pilgrim Fathers and him who was living thirty or 
forty years ago. 

I had as a visitor from England last year a descendant, 
and bearing the name, of Brampton Gurdon, whose daughter 
Muriel came to this town, when eighteen years of age, with 
her young husband, Eichard Saltonstall. He called me 



78 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

cousin, going back eight generations, to the time of the set- 
tlement of this town, for a common ancestor. So the knowl- 
edge we have of the men who settled this and other towns, of 
their characters, and of tlie parts they and their descendants 
took in the great work of founding and forming this mighty 
nation, in a certain way makes us feel the great history to 
be much briefer than of two centuries and a half. 

At the Endicott festival a few years ago, at the dinner 
succeeding the oration, the accomplished orator said that he 
had occasion in tlie morning to allude to the four " good men," 
— Conant, Woodbury, Balch, and Palfrey, — who were already 
settlers in Salem at the landing of Governor Endicott in 1628, 
and received him, and to Governor Endicott welcoming Gov- 
ernor Winthrop and Sir Eichard Saltonstall in 1630, " Now," 
said he, " I see before me descendants of those four men, who 
live in Salem, and still l^ear their names ; while on my right 
sit Wintln-op and Saltonstall, the latter born and formerly resi- 
dent in Salem." The late Dean Stanley, who was one of the 
guests, turned to me, and exclaimed, " What an astonishing 
statement ! Nothing like it could be said in any town in Eng- 
land." Is it not quite natural, then, that we feel such honest 
local pride ? and that the thousands upon thousands descended 
from our forefathers, wlio cover the prairies and fill the cities 
of our broad land, and who have so imparted of their inherit- 
ance to the homes of their adoption, all recur to their ances- 
try with deeper sentiment as they grow older ? 

I trust my motive may not be misunderstood if I say a few 
words about one of the founders in whom I may be supposed 
to feel a special interest, and to have a more intimate acquaint- 
ance with than with the otlier worthy men, his associates. 

Eichard Saltonstall was in 1634 oidy twenty-four years 
of age, but a young man of fine education, a graduate of 
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and of most liberal char- 
acter. He returned with his lather (who liad to take back 
his two" young daughters after that dreadful winter of 1630- 
31), but only to marry and bring back his young bride, 
Muriel Gurdon, and with her to settle in Ipswich. He made 



ADDRESS OF HON. LEVERETT SALTONSTALL. 79 

several voyages to England for her health, and to look after 
his estates, but passed the greater part of his life here, taking 
an active interest in tlie place and in public affairs. He 
incurred the displeasure of some of the principal men by- 
opposing a scheme of theirs for a standing council of three 
to hold office for life, and by writing a book showing it to be 
too aristocratic in its tendency, but succeeded in defeating 
the measure after a long and serious struggle and the effort 
on their part to censure him. He also petitioned the Gen- 
eral Court to punish two men who brought from Africa, two 
negroes, and that the latter should be returned — the first 
antislavery petition on record, I believe. Johnson, in his 
" Wonder-working Providence," says of him, — 

" His father gone, young Eicliard 
On most valiantly doth war." 

His son Nathaniel, born here, settled in Haverhill, where 
he married tlie daughter of John Ward, whose father was at 
one time minister here,^ and was a man of the same enlight- 
ened and liberal views which characterized his father and 
his grandfather. Appointed one of the judges to tiy the 
witches, he left the bench, and refused to take any part in 
the matter — an act requiring great courage at that time. 

I have this morning seen the old house where Saltonstall 
is said to have lived. This may or may not be so. But as, 
in visiting the Holy Sepulchre, this particular spot may be 
a matter of doubt, yet one thing is certain, here is Mount 
Zion, and there the Mount of Olives, here the Pool of Siloam, 
and there the Garden of Gethsemane : so here are the same 
hills, the same fields, and the same gentle river winding 
through them, which my ancestors beheld, — tlie one from 
early manhood to old age, the other from infancy to manhood, 
— and where they had their varied experiences of joy, of suf- 
fering, and of anxiety, and wliere they exercised their brave 
spirits, contending against privation and the various dangers 
of the time. 

1 Author of " Simple Cobbler of Agawam." 



80 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

May we never forget the founders of this town, and what 
they dared and endured for posterity, nor neglect to cherisli 
and hand down to our children and children's children their 
sacred memory ! 

The band played Keller's " American Hymn." 

The Toast-master. — I cannot forbear repeating 
that quotation from Cotton Mather, which you have 
already heard : " Here was a renowned church, con- 
sisting mostly of such illuminated Christians, that 
their pastors, in the exercise of their ministry, might 
think that they had to do, not so much w^itli disciples 
as with judges." 

Though the antiquarian demurs when we suggest 
that they built their original house of worship on 
yonder rock, I am sure that the founders of the early 
church did rear on a spiritual foundation that was 
as strong as the solid rock ; for all the years that 
have passed have never shaken it, and the storms have 
passed over it in vain. I offer you as the next 
sentiment, 

" The Founders of the First Church in Ipsiuich," 

and will call for a response from the worthy pastor, 
the Rev. E. B. PxILMee. 

ADDRESS OF REV. E. B. PALMER. 

Mr. PREsroENT, AND Ladies and Gentlemen, — When a 
member of the committee general, to wliom was assigned the 
business of designating those who should make responses to 
individual toasts, asked me to respond to this sentiment, I 
said, "Yes," with an interrogation-point after it. I have been 
shivering in my shoes from the time these exercises began, 
only regretting that I had not written an interrogation-point 




THE MEETING-HOUSE OF THE FIRST PARISH, IPSWICH, 1749-1846. 

(See page 147.) 



ADDRESS OF REV. E. B. PALMER. 81 

as long as yonder tent-pole. For, if the distinguished gentle- 
man at my right found nothing to say after what had been 
said by the orator of the morning and by his Excellency the 
Chief Magistrate of the State, what shall I have to say ? And 
if this gentleman [Mr. Saltonstall] who has so interestingly 
and profitably addressed us could run an intended speech of 
five minutes into one of twenty minutes, and make us think 
they were only five, what shall I do with a whole church full 
of Winthrops ? I want from now until the time the old Tro- 
jan traveller spoke of, " When the sinking stars would invite 
to slumber," to treat worthily a theme like this. If I were 
to be put under oath, in the presence of the representative of 
the legal element of the State, " to tell the truth, the wliole 
truth," and stop there, wlien would you get to bed ? At the 
last Commencement dinner at Bowdoin College, Senator 
Frye related an anecdote of a member of Congress who 
had been making a very long speech, and who was called 
to order by the presiding officer, and notified that he was 
not speaking to the point. " Gentlemen," he said, " I am not 
speaking to the point : I am speaking to posterity." — " Very 
well," said a friend, "go on. Speak five minutes longer, and 
your audience will be here." You are running a risk in call- 
ing upon me this afternoon, a fearful risk, of waiting for your 
posterity before you get out of this place. You run another 
risk, sir, if a natiu is to be considered, in the character of the 
man you call up. If I read the record aright, it runs like 
this : " Cheating got its meed in Edward Palmer, who, for his 
extortion in taking two pounds thirteen shillings and four- 
pence for the wood-work of Boston stocks, was fined five 
pounds, and ordered to be set one hour in the stocks." You 
see whom you get up here — not Edward, but Edwin. 

My theme is "The Founders:" I wdsh it had been the 
planters. True, the fathers founded where the early naviga- 
tors found and the Ahnighty confounded their enemies. Here, 
too, they pkmted as well as builded, — planted for after-time 
the seeds of a moral harvest ; and we are receiving the rich 
reward of their early work. We often heard in our school- 

6 



82 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

boy days the quotation from Webster : " I shall enter upon 
no encomium upon Massachusetts." It is hardly necessary 
for me to enter upon any encomium upon these distinguished 
men. They are here in their representatives. Shall I call 
them up to the minds of those who have been getting hold of 
all the copies of Felt's " Early IjDswich " so that I have not 
been able to see one for six weeks ? Shall I call the names 
of these illustrious men in this presence, — the Wards, the 
Winfchrops (worthy sons of worthy sires, and worthy sires of 
honored sons), the Thorndikes, the Kinsmans, the Cogswells, 
the Paynes, the Shatswells, the Burnhams, — a list almost 
innumerable ? No, this gathering tells its own story. But 
this is not all. The old Christopher Wren motto is inapt here : 
" Si monumentum requiris, circumspice " (" If you seek his 
monument, behold it here"). You must stretch the radius 
of your circum far beyond this if you would know what 
these men did who planted here when they founded. 

Shall I tell you a missionary story ? I venture to say it 
will be the only one that will be told here to-day. I will try 
to make it short. In 1852 missionaries from the Sandwich 
Islands went to the Islands of Marquesas, taking with them 
a converted native. In 1864 an American whale-ship went 
into the Marquesas Islands for supplies. Immediately the 
mate, who was the first officer to go on shore, was seized by 
the king, whose wrath had been provoked by the unkind 
treatment received at the hands of a Peruvian vessel that 
had formerly visited the island and taken away as a captive, 
for enslavement, the son of the king. The king seized upon 
this mate, who was the first white man to visit the island 
afterwards, and took him away to eat him alive — to cut him 
in pieces, and eat him. The life of that mate of that whale- 
ship was saved by that converted native, Kekela, who had 
been left as a missionary on the island. He rescued him at 
great expense on his own part. I will not enter into the 
detail of it ; but I will simply say that President Lincoln 
recognized the worthy conduct of the man, and nearly a year 
after, in the latter part of the year 1864, sent out of his own 



i 



ADDKESS OF REV. E. B. PALMER. 83 

pocket a gift amounting to five hundred dollars to that mis- 
sionary. What has that to do with the case ? It has simply 
this to do with it, that the radius of our circle reaches as far, 
at least, as the Sandwich Islands. Kekela was the product 
of the spirit that grew on this soil, that found an early home 
here in Ipswich. President Lincoln was in the presidential 
chair at the time as the outcome of the spirit that took early 
root on the spot where we stand. I do not claim this spirit 
for ourselves exclusively : I speak of the Puritan spirit which 
was the ruling spirit in the men who founded this early church. 

Limiting now our radius, and looking about us here, I am 
well aAvare that neither Ward nor AViuthrop nor Wise would 
have had very much to do in erecting, for example, the Meth- 
odist church that stands just over the wa}^, or the Episcopal 
church that lies just down under the hill, a little farther away. 
But Wesleyanism has entered in, and the life of the Church 
of England is enriched among us because of what was done on 
this spot by our fathers ; and I am sure that to-day Ward 
and Wise and Wesley, and the late lamented and sainted 
Simpson, rejoice, as they walk together the golden streets, 
over what has been wrought through their mutual labor 
under a Providence kind and wise and good. 

We must honor the founders of this church. We must 
honor them for their devotion to God and to humanity. We 
must measure and honor their deeds, not by the number who 
flock to the sanctuary here, not by the many or few of those 
who gather at the sacramental board, so dear to many of us, 
not by the number who answer to the prayer-meeting roll-call, 
nor by the splendor of church edifices and outward show, but 
by the long procession of faithful witnesses gone higher, by the 
refining and loving influences they have left behind in our 
social and civil life, by the unseen forces tliat are, I will not 
say spending themselves, but rather multiplying themselves, 
in neighboring towns, and cities far remote, — lives broader, 
lives purer, lives more helpful towards God, more fruitful in 
good, because in this place instructed, and in these homes nur- 
tured, in the truths of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. 



84 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

The Toast-mastee. — "We have lieard with swell- 
ing hearts of that glorious roll of departed worthies 
who have shed lustre on the history of this town. I 
propose as the next sentiment, 

" The Distingidshed Men who have illustrated the Annals of Ipswich." 

" The dead but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule 
Our spirits from their urns." 

A response will be made by Dr. Daniel Denison 

Slade. 

address of dr. daniel denison slade. 

Mr. President, and Ladies and Gentlemen, — You will 
all agree with me, that an after-dinner speech should be short 
and pithy. It would be very unwise in me to undertake to 
portray the character and services of such a man as General 
Daniel Denison in an after-dinner speech in so very brief 
a time. But there are many of his townsmen liere, and 
undoubtedly many others, who know nothing of this distin- 
guished man. You will therefore have patience with me 
while I give some few details of the life of this man to whom 
we all owe so much of good. 

Daniel Denison came, at the age of nineteen, from England, 
to these shores, together with his parents and his two brothers, 
George and Edward. They settled first in Eoxbury. How- 
ever, he did not remain there more than a year, when he 
moved to Newtown, now Cambridge. There he falls in love 
with and marries Patience, the daughter of Governor Thomas 
Dudley. Although he associated himself with the affairs of 
the plantation at Newtown, he does not seem to have remained 
there, but following in the footsteps of his father-in-law. 
Governor Dudley, he comes to Ipswich. Bringing his young 
bride to this settlement, he builds a small house, near the 
mill, in 1634-35. Pursuing the plan which has been adopted 
by so many of his descendants, he stays but a very short 



^ 



ADDEESS OF DR. SLADE. 85 

time in his humble home ; sells it in the course of two years, 
and moves to Meeting-house Hill, where land has been given 
him, and where he erects a larger and better house. There 
he remains for the space of twenty-five years ; and he prob- 
ably would have remained there the remainder of his life, if 
his house had not been destroyed by incendiarism, which 
was undoubtedly the act of a servant-woman, who was taken 
before the court, convicted of stealing from Denison, and 
sentenced to be whipped with ten stripes for lying about it. 

From the moment that Denison entered Agawam, or Ip- 
swich, his fellowmen found that they had with them a man 
of great power, of great intelligence, and a man who was 
destined to be one of the first among them. He commenced 
his civil life with the humble office of town-clerk, followed 
soon after by that of an assistant at the Quarterly Court held 
at Ipswich. He was in the following year chosen one of the 
deputies. He continued to be a representative for eleven 
years. Then he became an assistant, to which office he was 
chosen for twenty-nine years ; after that, one of the general 
commissioners of the Confederacy. 

In the town of Ipswich he took particular interest, not 
only in its education, but also in its religious matters. To 
him we are indebted in a great measure for the foundation 
of the grammar-school of Ipswich. He was one of the trus- 
tees, and also gave very much towards its support. 

Next Denison appears in all the political events of the 
day. There was no great event of this character with which 
he was not concerned. We find him engaged in the court 
that tried Mrs. Hutchinson. We find him also one of the 
commissioners chosen to treat with the French Governor, 
D'Aulnay, of Acadia. He was sent as a commissioner to 
treat with Gorges about the northern boundaries of Massa- 
chusetts. He was also one of the correspondents with 
Cromwell, who desired to send from this part some of the 
hardy New England settlers, that they might assist him in 
taking care of Ireland. In Denison' s letter to Cromwell, 
he says, " We shall take care of ourselves there ; but we 



86 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

want that no Irish shall inhabit among us, except such as 
we like of." 

It was in the military affairs of the Colony, however, that 
General Denison became, perhaps, the most distinguished. 
Commencing with the same year that he was clerk, he was 
chosen captain of a military company in Ipswich. He was 
very soon afterward considered as the leader in our times of 
trouble. Soon after, he was chosen sergeant-major, and then 
for the remainder of his life, from 1654, he was major-general 
of the entire military force of Massachusetts. He joined the 
Ancients and Honorables in 1660, and was one of the few 
instances where a man was made commander the same year 
that he joined. In his military capacity he was called upon, 
at the time wdien there was supposed to be a conspiracy of 
all the Indians against the Colonies, to defend the country, 
and put it in position of defence. Then, again, at the time 
of the threatened invasion of the Dutch against the Colonies, 
he was called upon to do the same. In King Philip's war 
he was one of the greatest and most distinguished leaders, 
especially at the eastward, where he remained throughout the 
whole war, and even long after the principal sachem had been 
sent as a prisoner to Boston. 

Such, my friends, is a brief outline of the life and services 
of Daniel Denison. I wish I could portray to you what his 
personal appearance was ; but it is impossible : I leave that 
for imagination to conjecture. No portrait, no description, of 
him, has come down. That he was a man of martial mien 
there can be no question, from the fact that he was a military 
commander for over fifty years. That he was a Christian 
soldier there is no doubt, since we have the evidence of all 
his associates, and also of a sermon preached at his funeral 
by his pastor, William Hubbard, as well as of a peculiar 
treatise which he left behind, which was called " Irenicon ; 
or. Salve for New England's Sore." 

From all this we may conceive that General Denison was 
a most remarkable and honorable man. He died at the age 
of seventy, and sleeps on yonder hillside. It is now more 



REMARKS OF HON. C. A. SAYWARD. 87 

than two hundred years since he was laid to rest; but old 
Ipswich will always keep his memory green. 

The Toast-master. — A further brief response will 
be made by Hon. C. A. Sayward. 



remarks of HON. C. A. SAYWARD. 

Mr. President, — I suppose there are few New England 
towns which cannot refer with pride to able and distinguished 
men who have been identified in all their interests, and aided 
materially in their growth and general welfare, or have gone 
out from them to make their mark in broader spheres of 
action, and by their noble lives have reflected honor upon 
the places of their nativity or adoj^tion. 

New England has obtained her world-wide reputation 
through the labors of this class of men. They wrought well 
in their day, and their memories should be kept fresh, and 
held up as an example to the coming generations. 

Ipswich has been blessed with a long line of strong, able 
men, who not only managed her municipal and ecclesiastical 
affairs well, but became strong factors in moulding and shap- 
ing our colonial, provincial, and constitutional governments. 
There are the names of many men upon our records who 
became distinguished in their day, and who were real bene- 
factors of tlie town and colony ; but time forbids an enumera- 
tion, and I can only give a passing notice of a few. 

The first work of clearing the wilderness for a permanent 
settlement was done under the supervision of one, who, 
though but a sojourner here, laid well the foundations upon 
which his successors reared tlie structure of the town. 

Soon following this pioneer came his brother-in-law, Samuel 
Symonds, whose abilities were soon recognized ; and the 
honors of office were heaped upon him by his appreciative 
townsmen. He was a deputy, an assistant, a justice of the 
Quarterly Court, and finally deputy-governor. He was an 



88 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

able and efficient man, well versed in public affairs, and had 
much influence in the concerns of the government. 

Contemporaneous with him was Eichard Saltonstall, who 
was here in 1635, setting up the first corn-mill in the town. 
And we fiud him filling various offices, both civil and mili- 
tary, writing books, defending the enslaved, aiding the cause 
of education, and contributing towards the support of the 
regicides. A broad, liberal-spirited man, it was truly said of 
him that he was " a succorer of the distressed, a defender of 
the wronged, and a benefactor to his fellowmen." 

Among our military men were Daniel Denison, who was 
the first major-general of the Colony, and for a long time the 
main dependence of the colonists as a military leader ; and 
Major Samuel Appleton, the courageous and dashing Indian 
warrior, who won renown in the bloody battle with the 
Narragansetts. 

And later, when the struggle of the Revolution was in 
progress, Llajor-General ]\Iichael Farley became a power in 
advancing the cause of Independence, and aiding the govern- 
ment in furnishing men, provisions, and clothiug to carry on 
the war. Another of Ipswich's sons was the distinguished 
Colonel Nathaniel Wade, who commanded the Ipswich 
minute-men at Bunker Hill, fought bravely at Long Island, 
Haarlem Heights, and White Plains, and won the confidence 
and esteem of the commander-in-chief of the colonial forces. 
Colonel Joseph Hodgkins also won distinction on many well- 
fought battlefields of the Eevolution, and deserves to be held 
in remembrance. 

In the professions we find Dr. Samuel Rogers and Dr. John 
Manning, both of whom were the most skilful physicians of 
their day ; Nathan Dane, the eminent jurist ; Rufus Choate, 
the brilliant orator and able advocate, whose voice fifty years 
ago this day thrilled the thousands tlien assembled on this 
spot to celebrate our tw^o hundredth anniversary ; and later 
still, and within the memory of all, that able and fearless 
judge, Otis P. Lord, the echo of whose voice has scarcely 
died away among us. 




COLONEL NATHANIEL WADE. 




COLONEL JOSEPH HODGKINS. 



REMARKS OF HON. C. A. SAYWARD. 89 

Among the scholars and literary men were Thomas Cobbett, 
who is said to have written more books in his time than any 
man in New England ; William Hubbard, the celebrated 
historian of the Indian wars ; Nathaniel Eogers, who was 
president of Harvard College ; and, later, Joseph Green 
Cogswell, the teacher and founder of Eound Hill School, and 
afterwards the noted Astor librarian. 

Then we have Professor Treadwell, the great mechanical 
genius and inventor ; William Oakes, the learned naturalist ; 
and, contemporaneous with them, that generous philanthro- 
pist, Augustine Heard, whose interest in his native town is 
perpetuated in a noble institution for educating and benefit- 
ing his townsmen. Besides these, many more might be 
named who have adorned and illustrated our annals, like the 
Wainwrights, the Whipples, the Paines, the Bradstreets, the 
Cogswells, and the Eppes. 

It is to such men as these that we are indebted . for our 
present form of government, our public school system, our in- 
stitutions of learning, and our marvellous growth and prosper- 
ity as a nation. Who, therefore, can be deemed more worthy 
of remembrance on this occasion than those who labored so 
untiringly to advance the general welfare of the people ? 

It becomes, then, not only our duty, but our pleasure, to 
recall their names, and recount their manly virtues, their 
sterling character, their political sagacity, their faithful de- 
votion to principles, and to thus gather inspiration from their 
example to perform well and with unflinching fidelity the 
duties which devolve upon us, citizens of the government 
which they assisted in founding. 

The Toast-master. — On the programme of the 
morning there was a poem by Mrs. Harriet Pres- 
COTT Spofford, which was omitted in its place. In 
order that the exercises may be slightly varied, that 
poem will now be read by Richard S. Spofford, 
Esq. 



90 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 



KEMAKKS OF KICHARD S. SPOFFORD, ESQ. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, — Appearing here solely in a 
representative capacity, I can assure you that you will not 
be detained with any prolonged remarks. Knowing the late- 
ness of the hour, and that there are many others present 
from whom you expect to hear, I content myself by saying 
that I have felt an unusual degree of interest in this occasion 
and in all the incidents by which it has been rendered so 
agreeable and instructive. From my earliest youth, this 
honored town of Ipswich has been to me a locality of great 
attraction, and among her citizens I have numbered some of 
my warmest friends. Nor have I been unfamiliar with her 
history, or with their names and deeds by whom that history 
has been made so brilliant and impressive. Whenever and 
wherever I hear her name spoken, and recall the picturesque 
charms of wave and wood, of field and sky, which greets the 
eye at every turn of her beautiful river, I am touched by 
some such sentiment as that expressed by old Izaak Walton 
in these gentle words : " When I last sat on this primrose 
bank, and looked down these meadows, I thought of them, as 
Charles the Emperor did of the city of Florence, that they 
were too pleasant to be looked on but only on holidays." 

With these prefatory remarks, I trust I may now entertain 
you with the verses which it has been the great pleasure of 
my wife to contribute to this occasion. 



THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 

Glad that two centuries and a half 
Have closed your happy labor, 

From all her rivers Newbury sends 
A greeting to her neighbor. 



POEM BY nARRIET PEESCOTT SPOFFORD. 91 

And zoned with spray-swept lights, the grief 

Of many storms upon her, 
Old Gloucester calls, and Boston bends 

Her triple crown in honor. 

While Strawberry Bank cries o'er her reefs, 

Wiscasset hears the voicing ; 
Great towns and hamlets up and down 

The windy coast rejoicing. 

Nor these alone, but they whose sires 

Left fair Acadia weeping, 
Eemembering warm and welcoming hearths, 

Your festival are keeping. 

Songs, too, far over summer seas. 

Should swell your birthday ptean, 
From children of the Cape de Verde, 

From isles of the ^gean. 

For where gaunt Famine stalked in rear 

Of battle's fell disorder ; 
Where stout hearts sank as harvests failed, 

And fire swept through the border, — 

Wide have you spread your generous hand 

With fond repeated action. 
And dropped, as showers drop out of heaven. 

Your gracious benefaction. 

Sweet Ipswich, throned upon your rock. 

And at your feet your river, 
Uncounted birthdays be your share. 

Forever and forever ! 

Forever may your civic heart 

Thrill, as in days long vanished, 
Responsive to the anguished cry 

Of houseless and of banished ! 



92 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

And never may the hearts you bless 

To grateful impulse deaden, 
But stir, as blossoming clover-fields 

To rain and sunshine redden ! 

Forever may your river flow 

In long, bewildering reaches, 
To lose itself in foaming bars, 

And surfs on silver beaches ! 

And dusk in reds and purples, bright 

In green and golden shadows, 
Fresh as the morning, ever keep 

Unchanged your sea-born meadows ! 

Still may the flashing sea-gulls wheel 

And scream beyond Bar Island, 
As when they saw the " Mayflower" hang 

Eeneath old Winthrop's Highland ! 

And ever on your Hundreds may 
The herds browse, and the swallows 

Pursue the sails that mount and dip 
To seek your dim sea-hoUows ! 

Oh, blest may be the storied lands, 

The Hills of Beulah dearer ; 
But to our hearts your sylvan charm 

Must yet be something nearer. 

And still the singer of the song 

Finds no enchantment rarer. 
And I^jswich shores so fair, that heaven 

Itself can scarce be fairer. 

The Toast-master. — Our old Mother, in cele- 
brating her two hundred and fiftieth birthday, does 
not selfishly confine herself to her own sons and 



EEMARKS OF MAJOR BEN: PERLEY POORE. 93 

daughters, but has sent her invitation far and wide, 
that all might come who are interested, or in any 
wise connected with our ancient town. I offer as 
the next sentiment, 

" Oitr Guests." 

A response will be made by Hon. Ben : Perley 
PooRE of our sister town. West Newbury. 

REMARKS OF MAJOR BEN: PERLEY POORE OF WEST 
NEWBURY. 

Mr. President, — Is there a society with a long name 
here at Ipswich, whose protection I can claim against the 
cruelty of calling upon me — a reporter, and not a speaker — 
to address this brilliant audience ? I find, too, upon refer- 
ence to the programme, that I am one of two respondents to 
this toast, — a pilot balloon, as it were, sent off in advance of 
the larger and imposing one which is to follow. It was per- 
haps well, however, that a resident of Old Newbury should 
be selected to respond to the toast of " Our Guests ; " for during 
the past two centuries and a half the men, w^omen, and chil- 
dren of Old Newbury have often been welcomed here. A 
convenient resting-place, in the old days of horse-power, for 
those who journeyed between Newbury and Salem, Ipswich 
was noted for the hospitality of her citizens and the reasona- 
ble charges of her tavern-keepers. "Why, Mr. President, the 
men of Newbury have drunk enough punch and flip here in 
Ipswich to fill the channel beneath Choate's Stone Bridge ; and 
I doubt whether there was a headache in the whole of it. 

Newbury, sir, was once a part of Ipswich, which was origi- 
nally bounded on the north by the Merrimack Eiver, on the 
east by Gloucester, and on the south by the Salem villages now 
known as Manchester,AVenham, and Gloucester. It was an In- 
dian sagambreship, or earldom, of which Masconnomet was the 
last sachem, and he sold his territory to Mr. John Winthrop, 
afterward the governor of Connecticut, for twenty pounds. 



94 THE TOWN" OF IPSWICH. 

"While I am not disposed to condemn the Puritans, who 
endeavored to found a theocracy in the forests of Xew Eng- 
land, I may be pardoned for saying that they were dependent 
on the military men who had been invited to cross the ocean, 
and who were not disposed to submit to the strict laws dic- 
tated by bigotry. At Ipswich, which was one of the frontier 
towns behind which Boston and Salem found security, Major 
General Denison, and others with martial reputations, gave 
proof of that military spirit which the soldiers of Ipswich 
afterwards displayed so gallantly and so gloriously in the 
old French war, in the Eevolutionary struggle with Great 
Britain, and in the recent contest for the suppression of the 
Eebellion. 

But, sir, I am to speak of the " guests " of Ipswich. Shall 
I go back to the Norsemen, who were here 877 years ago, or to 
Captain John Smith, who called the place Argona when he vis- 
ited it in 1614 ? Shall I go back to Governor Winthrop, who 
came here in 1G37; or to President Rogers of Harvard Col- 
lege, whose father preached here, and who married a daughter 
of General Denison ; or to Governor Shute, who was escorted 
from here to Newbury by the once famous Ipswich troop ? 
Shall I recall the visit of that gifted Frenchman, the Marquis 
de Chastellux, or that of the Father of his Country, George 
Washington, who here reviewed in 1789 the Third Essex 
Eegiment, many of whose officers had served under him during 
the Eevolution ; or of General Lafayette, who in 1824 once 
more fraternized with his old comrade Colonel Wade, who was 
the commander in the Eevolution (permit me to say) of my 
maternal great-grandfather, Eobert Dodge of the Ipswich 
hamlets ? Shall I recall those guests of Ipswich, — John 
Adams, Lowell, Parsons, Dexter, Webster, Story, Gushing, 
and Choate, — who often, with others " learned in the law," 
used to plead for their clients in the old Court House, and 
then tell stories at the tavern fireside ? 

What a brilliant panorama would the visits of the dis- 
tinguished guests of Ipswich make ! and how much could be 
said about them, did time permit ! But, sir, I will not weary 



EEMABKS OF EEV. GEORGE LEEDS, D.D. 95 

your patience, and I will leave the subject in the hands of 
my eloquent coadjutor, expressing in conclusion a hope that 
the good old town of Ipswich may long continue to hospi- 
tably welcome her guests, and that her sons and daughters 
may say of her, as the Italians did of their beloved city, Esto 
Perpdua ! — " Be thou eternal." 

The Toast-master. — I will also invite the Eev. 
George Leeds, D.D., to respond to this toast. 



EEMAEKS OF THE REV. GEORGE LEEDS, D.D., OF 
BALTIMORE. 

It is both a pleasure and an honor, Mr. President, to second 
the response which has been so felicitously made to you on 
behalf of the invited guests of Ipswich. I am proud to be 
numbered among them. To share in the hospitalities of the 
ancient town is a most agreeable distinction. And yet I am 
no stranger to Ipswich, — at least to its picturesque surround- 
ings, — though I could wish for a more intimate acquaintance 
than I liave with the good people that inhabit it. This is the 
place of my summer holiday and the abode of some of my 
nearest of kin. The mother of my children, though a native 
of Salem, was born of parents who went from Ipswich ; and 
the roots of my family life, I anticipate, will cling more 
tenaciously to this genial soil than to any other sjpot, in the 
person of my only grandson. 

We were told in eloquent words this morning of that worthy 
ancestry by which this settlement was planted. The son of 
a Puritan myself, I recognize gladly the many eminent virtues 
of the fathers from whom we are descended. Whatever the 
faults of our sires, — and their faults were patent, — they 
were not deficient at least in integrity of principle, in lofty 
purpose, in heroic courage. They were known for their fear 
of God and their love for the institutions of religion and 
learning. They brought with them to this country their 



96 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

notions of civil and political privileges. The orator of the 
day has told us that their sentiments on these, and other kin- 
dred subjects, did not originate with themselves, however they 
were fostered most successfully here. Traceable back, in the 
germ of them, even to an Aryan source, they were unfolded 
in Old England by a slow growth of civilization abetted by 
the srace of the Christian faith. Letters and arts and humani- 
ties, and all that dignifies man, and conserves society, were 
the product of ages of human improvement. And such was 
the hold that hereditary things had obtained upon our fathers, 
that they imported into New England, not only their ideas of 
liberty and rights, but even a union of the Church with the 
State, of ecclesiastical ties with governmental rule, differing 
from the Establishment which they had left behind them, 
chiefly in this, — in that the State in Great Britain was 
nominally first : in the Colonies, the Church was actual leader, 
and enforced her own discipline by policies and laws. I am 
sure there are none of us who would revive that order ; but I 
should profoundly regret, if, to a suspension of its influence, 
any decline could be traced in that fear of the Almighty, and 
reverence for his Word and ordinance, which are the stability 
of all times. 

I remember with great pleasure that the early settlers at 
Agawam came over the water in the good ship " Arbella," 
or sailed in its company. From the cabin of that vessel Nvas 
addressed by its inmates, and in the name of the rest, that 
filial and touching farewell to the mother-church of England, 
at whose breasts they acknowledged they had been spiritually 
nurtured, and for whose welfare they promised that they would 
continue to pray in their poor cottages in the wilderness. 

I remember, also, Mr. President, that the elder Ipswich by 
the Orwell, for which the younger was named, had been wont 
to pride itself greatly for the visit of kings to its borders. 
Edward I., Edward III., Queen Elizabeth, and George 11. 
honored it with their presence in their respective times. But 
the Ipswich we celebrate was horn of a prince, wholly royal, 
save in blood. John Winthrop the younger was the son of 



KEMARKS OF EEV. GEORGE LEEDS, D.D. 97 

a father equally illustrious with himself. They were both 
rulers iu their day, chief magistrates of Colonies ; and their 
distinguished line re-appears this hour in the courtliest gen- 
tleman of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of her 
most honored citizens, who has favored you with a letter of 
congratulation, written in his own graceful and instructive 
terms. 

I love to recall the fact that the Ipswich in fatherland had 
once its seat of learning, twin-sister to a foundation second 
to none in Oxford. I should like to compare lesser things 
with great, modest Mantua with Eome, and speak of your own 
goodly schools in the past, under Cheever and Cowles, and 
Miss Grant and others, which also, alas ! are extinct, like 
Wolsey's college in the village which gave him birth. But 
I forbear. The want of time forbids me. 

I thank you, Mr. President and kind friends, both on my 
own account and that of these numerous guests you have so 
generously welcomed ; and I join with them in invoking a 
benison on your town and its people, on your homes and your 
hearts, on the places of your worship and your places of edu- 
cation, on the memorials of your fathers in the High School 
of Thomas Manning and the Public Library of Augustine 
Heard, on the monument you have erected to your patriot 
sons who died in the defence of our common country, on the 
peaceful industries of your village, on your teeming farms, on 
your cattle feeding in large pastures, and may I add, Mr. Presi- 
dent, on your own Heartbreak Hill, the watch-tower of the 
Indian maiden who looked hence for her lover, and waited in 
vain for his return from the treacherous sea, until, as I trust, 
one true bachelor heart, responding to her call, brought peace 
to her troubled spirit. Excuse me, Mr. Haskell ; but I am not 
sure that your name was not originally Hearts-Kill, which, 
for euphony and for short, was changed to the one you bear. 
Should this be so, I am confident that this goodly assembly 
will agree with me, that if, in some pre-existent state, all un- 
consciously now, all innocently then, you were the unhappy 
occasion of breaking the peace, and disappointing the hope, 



98 THE TOWiN" OF IPSWICH. 

of some young daughter of the forest, you have done the ut- 
most in your power to make reparation by devoting a single 
undivided, unwedded life to her remembrance, and by going 
in your old age to meditate on her story. 

I give you for a sentiment, Mr. President, " The Town of 
Ipswich, ' beautifid. for situation,' at the confluence of the river 
and the tide-water, of the fresh stream from the meadows with 
the salubrious inlet from the ocean. Borrowing honor from 
the past in history, and worth from her present claims upon 
her children, she justly expects them to add to her lustre in 
the generations to come." 

Or, in words which an aged friend and relative who has 
just retired from your banquet would have been glad to 
utter, I propose for him, " This lovely and picturesque " 
region. 

"Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see, 
My heart untravelled fondly turns to thee." 

The band played a selection. 

LETTER FROM THE POET WHITTIER. 

The Toast-master. — A very pleasant letter has 
been received from Mr. Whittier, which will be read 
at this time : — 

Amesbury, 8 Mo. 14, 1884. 
To the Committee of the Ipswich Celebration. 

Gentlemen, — I very much regret that I am not able to 
avail myself of your kind invitation to tlie two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Ipswich, the ancient 
Agawam. There are few towns in New England of older 
date, or about which cluster more interesting historical and 
legendary associations. . Like your neighbor. Old Newbury, 
while it has sent its emigrants over the continent, it has re- 
tained its home reputation for honest manhood and worthy 
womanhood. " Beautiful for situation " on its fair river and 
pleasant hills, overlooking bay and islands, the homesick eyes 



ADDRESS OF HON. GEORGE B. LORING. 99 

of its far-wandering children may well brighten with joy as 
they gaze once more on its familiar and fondly remembered 
scenery. 

Thanking you for the invitation to a celebration in which 
every son of Essex, whether present or absent, will have an 
interest, I am very truly your friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

The Toast-master. — Old Ipswich was a busy 
place. An historian of the first century, in speaking 
of it, says that among her manufacturers were rope- 
makers, coopers, gunsmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, 
glovers, tailors, soap-makers, maltsters, ship-builclers, 
tanners, and curriers. In variety of occupation our 
modern town can hardly equal the ancient Agawam. 
Still we are not an idle people. Our acres are still 
tilled, our factory-wheels are still heard ; and our 
next sentiment shall be, 

" The Agyiculticral and Other Industrial Pursuits of I}')sivich ; " 

to which response will be made by one than whom I 
cannot conceive a fitter person, the Hon. George B. 
LoRiNG, United States Commissioner of Agriculture. 

ADDRESS OF HON. GEORGE B. LORING. 

Mr. President, L.a.dies and Gentlemen, — I am sure I 
agree with the president of this occasion, that Ipswich is a 
busy place. It always has been a busy place ; it has always 
done its business well ; and both its intellectual and its prac- 
tical work, as you have been told, has been thoroughly well 
done on all public and private occasions. I have uo doubt 
whatever that the sermon that Governor Winthrop preached 
here so many years ago was a model sermon to all the old 
clergy, and may be to all the young clergymen hereabouts, both 



100 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

in doctrine and in phraseology. We will accept that as a per- 
fect sermon. One of the most remarkable papers ever written 
in this Commonwealth, the paper that did more to guide this 
State on to the adoption of our Constitution, was 'concocted 
here in Ipswich, and is known as the "Essex Eesult." The 
most admirable centennial oration I have ever listened to in 
my life was delivered here this morning. I have delivered 
many a similar oration myself, sir. [Laughter and applause.] 
I am an expert in that kind of literature, and I know exactly 
how men peruse the annals of a town until the great pano- 
rama opens before their mind. Now, as I went on and lis- 
tened to that elaborate, philosophical, and eloquent account of 
what Ipswich had done here in her theological, ecclesiastical, 
and political capacity (a record for this town before which the 
sermon of Governor Winthrop and the Essex Eesult will pale 
hereafter into insignificance as the student of this town pur- 
sues its annals), — as I listened to that discourse, my mind 
was occupied continually in the attempt to ascertain where 
this intellectual effort proposed to culminate, what the great 
final capstone of the monument of this town was to be. And 
my heart leaped up when I heard the orator say, " Now, my 
friends, I come to the foundation of all this great truth ; I come 
to the business of this town, to the hard toil of our fathers, to 
the fundamental business upon which rests all educational 
interests, all theological efforts, all that makes us capable of 
understanding and realizing the great efforts of the mind of 
man." And my heart rejoiced more and more when I learned 
that the fathers here were all farmers. When I realized that 
there were representatives still in this Commonwealth of Sal- 
tonstall the first abolitionist, and of John Eogers the first 
martyr, who prided themselves at this day more that they 
were farmers than that they were abolitionists or martyrs, I 
felt that my time had at last come, and that I could take you 
all by the hand, and wander over tlie fertile fields of Ipswich, 
and admire these lands, in which six acres was considered 
farm enough ; where every man was allowed a little garden- 
patch, because it was supposed the more land a man had, the 



ADDEESS OF HON. GEOEGE B. LOEING. 101 

poorer lie grew ; in which the great agricultural industry of 
this country found its cradle, its birthplace, — that industry 
which occupied the entire attention of our fathers here, and 
without which all the sermons of Governor Winthrop, and all 
the papers of Theophilus Parsons, would have perished from 
the earth, and been heard of no more, and our clerical young 
brother would have had no opportunity to deliver his oration 
upon the power and prosperity of his birthplace. 

Now, sir, what was the industrial condition of this town in 
the early days ? You have read a long list of its occupations. 
I suppose there might have been one ropemaker, perhaps one 
shoemaker, perhaps one cooper. There may have been every 
variety of occupation, because every man in those days had to 
be his own shoemaker, and his own cooper, and his own car- 
pentei', and his own wheelwright. And the material condition 
of this town — its carts, its wagons, and its shoes — illustrated 
the skill of the mechanics that made them most thoroughly. 
In the first place, however, they were farmers. They came 
here because they were farmers. John Winthrop and Richard 
Saltonstall sent them here because they were farmers. And 
with their shrewdness and thrift, which have characterized 
the succeeding generations of these families, they came here 
because they knew perfectly well that John Endicott had 
made a financial failure in Salem, and it was time to do 
something for the prosperity of the rising Colony. Naumkeag 
was three thousand pounds in debt. — We don't believe in 
having any debt in Salem now, do we, sir ? 

Mr. . — Theoretically. 

Mr. Loring. — And so to-day, sir, when our necessities in 
Salem equal our opportunities, we send to Ipswich, and call 
on the intellectual and practical force of this town to come 
to our aid. Salem, sir, owes much, as we all know, to the 
sons of Ipswich, whose ancestors were farmers, and who now 
enjoy that system of landholding which the fathers of New 
England organized in the beginning, — a system which gave 
them that power and that strength which has made her 
people what they are. 



102 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

I am often reminded, when topics like these are discussed, 
of the opinion expressed by De Tocqueville nearly half a cen- 
tury ago with regard to the genius and power of the American 
Eepublic. His attention was naturally turned, on his arrival 
here, to the seat of government, where he expected to find 
the mainspring of our civil and economic action. His own 
country presented to his mind the most remarkable example 
of the influence exerted by a powerful and controlling central 
organization upon national civilization. To him Paris was 
France. From that great seat of power went forth all the 
forces which animated and controlled French energy and 
French thought. The author received his inspiration, the 
publicist his guidance, the artist his direction, the cultivator 
of the soil his relation to the land he cultivated, from the 
centralized forces which gathered around the capital of his 
country. To Washington, therefore, the mind of De Tocque- 
ville naturally turned, and to Washington he directed his steps. 
The organization of our government was a matter of deep 
interest to him. The working of its various branches, all 
engaged in a common object, presented the problem which 
had been undertaken in no other country, and the solution 
of which depended entirely on the success of that Eepublic 
whose w^ork began at the planting of the Colonies, and was 
the slow growth of centuries of toil and trial and conflict. 
He turned his attention to the executive branch of the gov- 
ernment, in which the older countries had laid the corner- 
stone of their civil fabric ; but neither in the person nor in 
the prerogative of the President did he find tliat vital force 
by which the working of a government could be guided or 
controlled. Naturally attracted by the representative body 
born immediately of the popular will, he expected to find in 
the two Houses of Congress the fountain of popular power, 
the spirit which had built up, and would naturally support, 
a popular government. But here, too, he was disappointed. 
He turned liis steps to the Supreme Judicial Court of the 
United States ; but in this august body he discovered nothing 
which would promote the growth of the Piepublic in peace, or 



ADDKESS OF HON. GEOEGE B. LOEING. 103 

nerve its arm in war. Passing from tliese scenes, in which he 
found the machinery, and not the motive-power, he devoted 
himself to the study of the people themselves in their various 
occupations and industries. Eemembering the relation which 
the peasantry of France bear to the land on which tliey live, 
he expected to find among the yeomanry of this country the 
animating spirit of our free institutions. In this he was not 
mistaken. He declared that the division and subdivision of 
American lands among the American people, with the civil 
rights and privileges which go with it, made this people great 
and powerful for every emergency, and for demands of pros- 
perity and peace. He knew well that under the Code- 
Napoleon, France was divided into small landholdings, now 
numbering nearly a million ; but he also knew, that, with the 
peasant proprietors of France, there could be found no such 
opportunities as belong to him whose civil lessons were taught 
in the town-meeting and the caucus. He came, here to learn 
what American institutions were, and he found every land- 
holder not only the possessor of a farm, but the possessor 
also of civil liberties of which we are all proud, and which we 
all enjoy. To the citizen in every walk in life, the service 
of tliis country is so open and so attainable, that the passage 
from private to public life is as natural as the breaking of the 
dawn, or the quick succession of the revolving seasons. The 
landholders, who constitute a large proportion of our popula- 
lation, pass with a certain admirable fitness of judgment from 
the land to the halls of legislation and to the popular assembly. 
De Tocqueville saw all this. He saw that resistless love of 
public servdce which inspires the active thought of the 
American people, that wisdom which they exercise in the 
successful appeal to a popular vote, that self-poise in political 
prosperity, that self-possession and courage, which they mani- 
fest under political defeat. To a people thus animated, to 
popular institutions thus founded, to the ownership of landed 
estates, with all the rights and privileges which go with it, he 
attributes the power of the American Eepublic, the only true 
Eepublic on the face of the earth. 



104 THE TOWIS" OF IPSWICH. 

Now, sir, the tanners and coopers and carpenters whom you 
have enumerated were the farmers, as well as the mechanics, 
of this town in the early days. They tilled the virgin soil 
here with skill and success. And not only they, but their 
professional brethren also, were members of that great agri- 
cultural community which occupied the entire area of the 
Colonies, developed their wealth, made the laws, fought out 
the wars. The clergy of New England, from whose firesides 
went forth the cultivated men of the land to guide the coun- 
sels and regulate the affairs of the State, and whose power 
in the pulpit constituted an ecclesiastical rule which has 
seldom been equalled, were farmers, as well as preachers, — 
thrifty, toiling, successful farmers. Their faith was fixed ; 
their doctrines were established with authority. They had 
passed beyond the discussion of "fixed fate, freewill, fore- 
knowledge absolute," into high discourse on all these recog- 
nized and undoubted points. And having accepted their 
faith, and allowed their minds to be guided by it in the great 
paths of truth, they devoted their hours by day to their corn- 
fields and potato-patches and orchards. In the long warm 
summer afternoons they might have been found following the 
hay-cart with an economy and patient care hardly known 
to Euth as she gleaned in the fields of Boaz. Their salaries 
were small ; their industry was great ; their toil as clergymen 
and farmers was incessant ; their usefulness was everywhere 
recognized; their lives were devoted; their memories are 
sacred. The physicians of that day, like their more power- 
ful companions in the pulpit and the counting-house, owned 
broad lauds, took care to stock their farms with good cattle, 
were ready at any time to receive from the patient whom they 
had killed or cured a choice bit of land by will ordered as a 
compensation for their professional services. Seldom did the 
lawyer carry his client through a long and tedious and com- 
plicated case in the courts, that he did not become possessed 
of the client's favorite w^oodlot before the case was finished. 
They all looked upon the land as a real possession. They all 
made farming the foundation of their business. They loved 



:, i 



ADDRESS OF HON. GEORGE B. LORING. 105 

and believed in the occupation. Their virtues were as firm 
as the hills they owned and admired. They were faithful 
and able citizens, the pillars of State ; and, when war darkened 
the land, they fought for their altars and their fires, and by 
their deeds of valor won from the great poet and philosopher, 
sitting in the shadow of that monument erected to com- 
memorate their noble acts as Eevolutionary sires, that proud 
tribute — 

" Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

But I am reminded that I must leave this delightful pic- 
ture, and pass on to the consideration of the present day. 
Connected with agriculture, and supplying the farmer with 
his local market, may now be found manufacturing com- 
munities made up of a busy and thriving people. Shoes, 
cloth, cordage, are all made here, and give life and energy 
and wealth to the town : forty -nine shoemakers, as the census 
tells us, and four hundred and forty-nine cloth-makers, de- 
scendants of those whose homespun clothing was spun by 
their wives, and woven by their daughters, the fair girls of 
a former generation, whose little weaving-rooms — just large 
enough to hold the weaver and the loom, and narrow enough 
to keep out all loving and lounging interference — still remain 
untenanted, it is true, but filled with memories of domestic 
happiness and thrift, — the commencement of an industry 
now employing hundreds of thousands of persons, and giving 
profitable investment to hundreds of millions of dollars. For 
the convenience of the early inhabitants, too, the peripatetic 
cobbler went from place to place with his lapstone and seat, 
producing, after many a day of toil at the fireside, a pair of 
boots which time and wear alone could bring into proper 
proportions — the dawn of that industry which to-day enables 
an operative to turn out a thousand shoes a day, and which 
last year produced a hundred million dollars in the State of 
Massachusetts alone. And so, too, has modern agriculture 
here advanced with rapid strides. While the manufacturers of 



106 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

to-day produce about 8548,000, the farmers are doing their 
share of the industry which makes the Ipswich of our day 
one of the busiest towns in this Commonwealth. The farms 
here yield a hundred and twenty gallons of milk daily. 
Seventeen thousand bushels of potatoes and eleven thousand 
bushels of corn are grown on the one hundred and fifty-eight 
farms here, whose annual crops are valued at nearly a hun- 
dred thousand dollars, including four thousand eight hundred 
tons of hay — the loose hay which almost monopolizes the 
market in this county. So, when I am told that the agri- 
culture of Essex County is dying out, I turn to our diversified 
industries, so well represented in this town, and point to the 
widespread air of prosperity which marks this community, 
to the well-painted buildings, the well-cultivated fields, the 
comfortable homes of our people, and learn what mechanical 
occupations can do to aid the farmer in exercising the same 
ingenuity in his calling that the manufacturer does in his. 
The staple products are indeed abandoned; but the garden- 
crops have more than filled their places, and have added to 
the health as well as to the wealth of this community of man- 
ufacturers and ingenious agriculturists. 

Now, sir, I have described the ancient and modern indus- 
tries of this town, and have endeavored to lay before you the 
relations they hold to each other. In doing this I have been 
guided by the precepts of the eloquent orator of the day. I 
agree with him, that theological discussions are interesting. 
I agree with him, I trust, that an abiding faith is a source of 
most profound comfort to the human soul. I agree with him, 
that philosophical disquisitions on the condition of man, on 
the doctrines of spiritual and material evolution, are worthy 
of occupying the attention of the profoundest thinkers in the 
land. I agree with him also, that, leaving all this behind us, 
we can contemplate with supreme satisfaction the work of an 
industrious, independent, and loyal people, whose honorable 
record has continued from the days of the fathers even until 
now. If he, as a philosophical historian of the town, can 
estimate the material interests here as of foremost value, and 



ADDRESS OF HON. GEORGE B. LORING. 107 

turn with pride to tlie sound foundation of honorable industry 
upon whicli a noble social and civil superstructure rests, how 
much more may I, as the Commissioner of Agriculture, wliose 
mind is constantly occupied with the material welfare of the 
Eepublic, rejoice that the industrious habits of the fathers, as 
well as their abiding faith and their free aspiration, have been 
preserved to this generation ! That we are a free people, a 
nation of brave hearts and vigorous minds, the world is con- 
scious. But let us remember that we rejoice in an even- 
handed prosperity to be found nowhere else, that we are well 
fed, well clad, well housed, well supplied with the comforts 
and luxuries, the necessaries and the adornments, of life for 
the gratification of our " sense for conduct and our sense for 
beauty." And so I, representing the business of the com- 
munity, commend to all the generations that come after us 
the ways of our ancestors, the ways of their sons, and the 
ways of ourselves, in the pursuit of those diversified industries 
which for us, as they did for them, give us this great power 
of self-support, and should teach America to leave other 
nationalities to carve out their own industrial career for 
themselves. And may the mental and moral and material 
record of Ipswich as an exemplary part of this Republic, 
guide her people in a career of industry and worth which 
will give the historian of a hundred years hence the 
opportunity to dwell on annals as nol^le as those which 
have been presented to us to-day with so much eloquence 
and power ! 

The Toast-master. — I think that one of the 
most significant facts in our town history is, that 
in 1642 the town voted to establish a free school, 
and that in 1651 a Latin School was begun, to pre- 
pare boys for college; and that this school never 
ceased to perform its functions, until, by the munifi- 
cent Manning gift, our present admirably equipped 
Manning School was founded, into which the old 



108 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

Latin School was merged. I give, therefore, as the 
next sentiment : — 

" Our Public School System." 

" Yet on her rocks, and on her sands. 
And wintry hills, the schoolhouse stands, 
And what her rugged soil denies, 
The harvest of the mind supplies." 

" The riches of the Commonwealth 
Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health ; 
And more to her than gold or grain 
The cunning hand and cultured brain." 

I take great pleasure in calling, for a response to 
this toast, upon R. H. Manning, Esq., of New York. 

ADDRESS OF R. H. MANNING, ESQ. 

After the flood of eloquence with which we have heen 
refreshed, I could wish, Mr. President, that some one more 
competent than I am had been called upon to respond to the 
toast just proposed : nevertheless, I am glad of an oppor- 
tunity to say a few words to my fellow-townspeople about 
our public schools ; not so much in eulogy of their past use- 
fulness, as to offer some suggestions concerning their future. 

What is that public-school system in which we have re- 
joiced so long ? Upon what principle was it established ? 
It was, in effect, a voluntary provision made by all, in pro- 
portion to each one's ability, for the good of all. It was a 
recognition of the fact that the interests and welfare of each 
member of the community are bound up with, and dependent 
on, the intelligence and well-being of every other member of 
the community. It was more than that prophetically, and 
is more than that to-day ; for it is a constant impulse and a 
constant leading toward the practical realization of the great 
Christian doctrine of human brotherhood. For what it has 
been, and for what it is and is to be, we may well bring, on 



ADDRESS OF E. H. MANNING, ESQ. 



109 



such an occasion as this, our offerings of grateful remembrance 
to the men who laid this corner-stone of a true democracy. 

But, while we congratulate ourselves on the enjoyment of 
this common heritage, we may well remember, that, like every 
other good thing, it is subject to the law of evolution, and 
that therefore it must develop into broader and broader use- 
fulness, and become adapted, from time to time, to the needs 
of the time. The intention of its originators was to provide 
for the enlightenment of the whole people, to prepare the 




THE MANNING SCHOOL. 



citizen for the faithful, intelligent discharge of his political 
responsibilities, and to enlarge the capacity of all for their 
several callings and social duties. Such, doubtless, was their 
chief purpose, rather than the preparation of a few for what 
have heretofore been considered more scholarly attainments. 

I have no desire, in this presence, to say a word in dispar- 
agement of that further culture in ancient classic lore which 
those may seek who have a taste for it and are willing to 
pay for it ; but, as it is doubtful if such culture makes men 
better or more useful citizens, it is of questionable right to 
tax the public for such purely private purposes ; and I deem 



110 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

it a misnomer to call that a Liglier or a more liberal culture 
than can be had from the study of English literature and the 
great store of knowledge it contains. 

Professor Huxley has well said, " If a man cannot get cul- 
ture of the highest kind out of his Bible and Chaucer and 
Shakspeare and Milton and Hobbes and Bishop Berkeley, to 
name only a few eminent authors — I say, if he cannot get 
it out of these, he cannot get it out of anything." And we 
may add, and out of the more modern English and American 
history and poetry and fiction, and from such philosophers 
and moralists as Mill and Spencer and Darwin and Emerson, 
and from the study of the natural sciences, standing rever- 
ently at the door of the great temple of Nature, if, haply, we 
may enter in, and see the unfolding of her mightiest and her 
minutest w^onders. Is not this, rather, the liberal culture ? 
And are not such the things that should be wrought into the 
intellectual fibre of each rising generation ? And is not the 
mother-tongue rich enough in power and grace of expression 
to challenge cultivation even by the most scholarly ? 

I plead only for the greatest good of the greatest number 
in the administration of our public schools. Not the literary 
man nor the lawyer, not the doctor nor the minister, should 
have at the public cost a more liberal preparation for their 
calling than the farmer, the mechanic, the manufacturer, the 
engineer, and the builder have for theirs. 

In times past, and not so long past that some of us cannot 
remember them, spelling and the three E's constituted the 
entire curriculum of many of our public schools : now there 
are other studies taught in them which no youth who would 
keep himself abreast of the times, and who means to stand 
for something as a social factor, can afford to neglect. To say 
nothing of literature and music and drawing, there are phys- 
ics and chemistry and botany and physiology that demand 
attention. These, and others like these, concern our every- 
day practical life. But they cannot be learned in the old 
■way, — from books alone, or with words only, which are but 
the signs of things. They must be studied with the things 



ADDRESS OF R. H. MANNING, ESQ. Ill 

themselves, so far as practicable, in our hands, and before our 
eyes. 

Already, here and in Europe, educators are insisting that 
the desideratum in schools is experimental and manual train- 
ing. For this we must have not only larger cabinets, more 
apparatus, and better chemical laboratories, but also well- 
equipped workshops with expert teachers, where our boys, 
and girls too, can learn something of the nature and proper- 
ties of materials, and of the best methods of converting them 
to human uses. 

We boast of our public-school system, and are prone to 
think it the best in the world. We must look to our laurels. 
Europe is ahead of us in some respects, especially in the mat- 
ter of manual and technical schools : as a consequence, we 
still import many of the finer fabrics in use. If we would 
not be outdone in our manufactures, and have them perma- 
nently shut out of foreign markets, we must inspire our youth 
with an ambition to excel in whatever they do, and give them 
such intellectual and industrial training as will make them 
the best workmen in tlie world. But this is not all. Impor- 
tant as are these material interests, they are but the founda- 
tion on which is to be built a nobler social and spiritual life. 

In the school of the future, attention will be given to teach- 
ing the principles of taste, and to the cultivation of the sense 
and love of beauty ; so that their refining influences, mani- 
fested in all our homes, will make them more attractive, and 
more conservative of order and morality. And above all, in 
view of the declining influence of religious teaching, espe- 
cially on young men, there will be need of a more compre- 
hensive teaching of morals than heretofore — not the morals 
of Sunday-school books, nor of the Ten Commandments 
only, however good they may be, but that more thorough 
understanding of the motives and reasons for right-doing, to 
ourselves as well as to others, which can come only from a 
scientific investigation of our nature and our needs. 

A constant and an important feature of our public-school 
system has been the co-education of the sexes, and in the same 



112 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

studies. In due time, and as a logical outcome, this must lead 
to the emancipation of woman from social, legal, and political 
disabilities. Not until she stands the peer of man in all these 
relations, and not until righteousness and justice, informed 
with intelligence, shall guide and control the conduct of all, 
will our public schools have done their perfect work. 

Let us hope that in the not distant future, and long before 
she celebrates the three hundredth anniversary of her corpo- 
rate existence, Ipswich may have some such school as I have 
suggested among her most cherished institutions. 

The Toast-master. — The next sentiment is, 

" The Soldiers of Ipswich : their record from the earliest settlement 
of the country to the present time has been one of tinhlemished 
honor and pati'iotism." 

A response was expected from JoHisr D. Billings, 

Esq., commander of the Massachusetts Grand Army; 
but in his absence there will be a response made by 
the band. 

The band played " Marching through Georgia." 

Mr. Sayward. — We have all listened this morn- 
ing with very great pleasure to a very able and elo- 
quent address, and I have no doubt, sir, that we all 
feel under obligation to the speaker for his services. 
It seems to me that there should be some public 
recognition or acknowledgment of the great service 
which he has rendered, and it is for this purpose 
that I rise to offer this sentiment : — 

" The Orator of the Day : descended from, the old Puritan stock, 
through whose veins ffotvs the blood of sturdy ancestry, his effort 
to-day has demonstrated the fact that the talents of the fathers 
have been transmitted to their children, even to the eighth genera- 
tion. ^ May his tribe increase /' " 



y 



KESPONSE OF EEV. JOHN C. KIMBALL. 113 



RESPONSE OF EEV. JOHN C. KIMBALL. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, — I promise 
you that my response to this toast, an interpolation, as I 
see, in the regular programme, shall be a good deal less than 
an hour in length, even a clergyman's preaching-hour. I 
thank you very much for the complimentary reference to me 
in your toast, and for the patience and kindly judgment with 
which you listened to my words this morning. I am indeed 
proud of being counted a son of old Ipswich, and of having 
in my veins the blood of eight generations nourished at its 
breast. I have always loved it from a boy up ; always thought 
of it, even while my work has been elsewhere, as my real 
home ; always felt glad that I was born on its soil, that I 
got my first ideas of what beauty, nature, country, and God's 
earth are among its rounded hills, and along its winding 
stream ; that I learned letters in its public schools, and reli- 
gion in its church and Sunday school; glad, Unitarian as I 
now am, that I was taught here the good old Ortliodox faith, 
— the best possible foundation, so I have found it, for what I 
rejoice in to-day ; and glad above all else, that I learned what 
parental love and care are in one of its blessed homes. Like 
General jMichael Farley, — that grand old Kevolutionary sol- 
dier, who, at the reception of Lafayette on his visit here, took 
off not only his hat, but his wig also, in his excitement, and 
anxiety to show him respect, — I feel, Mdienever I think of 
my indebtedness to the town, as if I ought, somehow, to give 
it double honor. And this feeling of reverence, an instinct 
before, has been immeasurably increased by my study of its 
records and of its history in preparing for this occasion. 
I tell you, friends, you especially, young men and women 
wliom I see here, that we none of us have ever half appre- 
ciated what it is to be the offspring and heii'S of this good 
old town, — what stock it was made of at first, what labors, 
love, and prayers have gone to build it up, what whole-souled 
men and women have illustrated its annals, how grand are its 

8 



114 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

traditions, and how largely it concentrates in itself all that 
is richest and best in our New England life and in our free 
American institutions. Never speak ill of it. To love and 
honor one's native town is the letter A in the love and honor 
of one's country ; and the best inliuence of this present cele- 
bration will be its fresh inspiration to us who are now living 
to show ourselves the worthy heirs of its grand traditions, 
to take up and carry on in the town-meeting, and on every 
possible occasion, the work of progress that the fathers began, 
imitating the large public spirit of its early years and of its 
Eevolutionary period, and to make the fruit of our ancestral 
tree a fit outcome of its precious seed and of its faithful 
sowers. 

" On this enchanted loom 

Present and past commingle, fruit and bloom 

Of one fair bough, inseparably wrought 

Into the seaiiiless tapestry of thought ; 

So charmed, with undeluded eye we see 

In history's fragmentary tale 

Bright clews of continuity, 

And feel ourselves a link in that entail 

Which binds all ages past with all to be." 

The Toast-mastee. — I take pleasure in proposing 
now a toast to the 

" Member of Congress from the Seventh District," 

and invite a response from Hon. Eben F. Stone. 

REMARKS of HON. EBEN F. STONE. 

Mr. President,— This is an interesting day for the peo- 
ple of Ipswich. I have felt, while sitting here, as the Gov- 
ernor did, when he said in his speech to you a short time 
since, that he tried to find something which would justify 
]iim in claiming that he had some right here beyond that 
which originated in the invitation. I feel as though I had 
some title to be here ; for while I am not of Ipswich 



REMAEKS OF HON". EBEN F. STONE. 115 

stock directly, yet I happen to be a lineal descendant of 
one of those who went from Ipswich in 1635 to Newbury. 
You recollect it is stated in the history of those days, that 
the little Colony which was first born, so to speak, of this 
old town of Ipswich, and which went to Newbury, consisted 
of some of the chief men of this place. And among those 
who went from here at that time to settle that old town near 
here at the mouth of the Merrimack, was one William Moody, 
named in the history. Being one of his lineal descendants, 
I think that I may rightly claim that I am not altogether a 
stranger here to-day. 

I wish to call attention to one or two matters which have 
always interested me in relation to this whole line of coast. 
It is interesting, Mr. President, to remember a matter to 
which you referred this morning, — that in 1630 Governor 
Winthrop ordered that persons should be forbidden from set- 
tling here in this town. He forbade, as far as he could con- 
trol it, the settlement of people here in 1630. Now, it is 
curious to inquire why he interposed at that time to prevent 
a settlement here. It must have been that,, even then, Win- 
throp and his party anticipated the importance of having the 
people of this whole territory, extending from Charles Eiver 
to three miles north of the Merrimack, occupied by men in 
entire sympathy with his party : so, at that time, Governor 
Winthrop instructed those that were identified with him to 
prevent any settlement by other parties in Ipswich. In 1633 
and 1634, when a settlement took place, it is no exaggeration 
to say that the party that was sent here to occupy this old 
town at that time was made up of picked men. Those who 
went from Ipswich to Newbury, as I have already said, were 
a select party made up of the chief men of Ipswich. So 
early, in those days, it was evidently a part of tlie purpose 
of Winthrop and his associates to take possession of this coast, 
not only because they wanted to hold it against the French, 
but because they feared that their rights might be interfered 
with by persons claiming under other grants : on the one 
side, parties claiming under those who were in the neighbor- 



116 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

hood of Ipswich before them ; auJ, on the other side, parties 
claiming under those wlio settled Portsmouth, and who uuder- 
tQok to occupy the territory immediately east of the Merri- 
mack Eiver. It is interesting to know that this part of the 
State of Massachusetts was occupied by men who represented, 
in a special sense, the ideas and interests which controlled 
Winthrop and his party when they came here and took up 
this spot ou this coast. 

I stand now for the Seventh District of this State. And 
of all the districts which now compose the Union (of which 
this is only one three-hundred-and-twenty-fifth part), of all 
the districts in this country of ours, so large and so extended, 
there is not a single one which contains to-day more of the 
spirit, and more of the ideas, which animated our forefathers 
in the past, than can be found in this district which I have 
the honor to represent. De Tocqueville says in his History, 
that it was New England ideas that extended to neighboring 
States, and from those States to distant States, until they 
finally permeated the entire country ; and that American in- 
stitutions and American laws are the product of New England 
ideas. If that be true, if this country of ours, with its insti- 
tutions to-day, is properly the product of New England ideas, 
there is no part of New England which can rightfully claim 
credit for having contributed in all respects more freely to 
that result than the Seventh District, which covers this coast 
between Salem and the Merrimack. 

The special interest which caused our fathers to unite to 
form this union was the commercial interest of this coun- 
try. Is it not true tliat in those early days this commer- 
cial interest was largely represented by the merchants of 
Salem, Marblehead, Beverly, Ipswicli, and Newburyport ? 
And so here we find that spirit of union which finally took 
form in the government which was eventually established. 
It was especially represented by the people who lived here 
upon this coast. It is therefore a matter of great satisfaction 
to me that I can claim the credit of being, to some extent, 
identified with the district and with the territory which, from 



EEMARKS OF HON. EBEN F. STONE. 117 

the early history of the country, has contained the men who 
have shaped, to a hirge extent, the ideas and institutions 
which have from time to time prevailed. Why, sir, I have 
reason to think, and I have no doubt that you think, that 
John Winthrop and his party came here expecting something 
more than a little settlement upon this coast, I believe that 
John Winthrop and his party, when they landed upon this 
desolate coast some two hundred and fifty years ago, had 
dreams of ambition, and that they expected, at no distant 
day, that they should establish a State here which should have 
a place, and an honorable place, in the history of mankind. 
But they could not have anticipated, not the most successful 
of the adventurers of that body could have anticipated, that 
in less than three centuries there would be established upon 
this continent an empire which should rival the great powers 
of the world, and that should even lead England itself in all 
that constitutes national greatness and prosperity. 

Mr. Green, in his interesting History of England, in one 
passage, speaks of the greatness of this country and of its 
future promise, and declares that hereafter the path of Eng- 
lish empire will not be by the Thames and the Humber, but 
along the valleys of the Mississippi and the Hudson, upon this 
western continent. And not only will England rejoice in the 
prosperity of this country, but England, through America, is 
in the future to have the primacy of the human race. Eng- 
lish laws, English ideas, and English institutions, as repre- 
sented upon this continent, will be hereafter the intellectual, 
the moral, and the material life of mankind. 

The Toast-master. — Mr. Whittier, in his letter, 
speaks of the great number that have gone out 
from this old town over the whole continent. We 
have here absent townsmen from north, south, east, 
and west, and it is very fitting that we propose to 
them a sentiment : — 

" Our Absent Fellow-townsmen.^^ 



118 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

I invite a response from Colonel Luthek Caldwell, 
ex-Mayor of Elmira, N. Y. 

ADDRESS OF COLONEL LUTHER CALDWELL. 

Mr. Puesident, — I am sure I can accede to the request 
of the Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, when lie 
notified me that I should respond to this toast, to " respond 
briefly." I think he must have had in his profound mind 
the extent of the services of this day ; and it has recalled to 
my mind the words of Dr. Watts : — 

" God is in heaven, and man below ; 
Be short our tunes, our words be few." 

And I am sure I can approve of that sentiment at this late 
hour in the afternoon, for the lengthening shadows warn us 
that this day's events will soon terminate. 

I have heard nothing to-day — indeed, since I arrived in 
this town yesterday — but about my fathers and forefathers. 
I am full of antiquities and genealogies. I shall dream about 
Governor Winthrop, or Richard Saltonstall, or some of those 
venerable men whose names have been so repeatedly men- 
tioned here, if I dream at all to-night. At a ministerial 
association out in Western New York, where I live, each of 
the ministers was assigned some theological topic or question 
to discuss, and there was a little difference of opinion as to 
who should have the first chance at the audience. The chair- 
man, however, who had the assignment, called upon brother 
Johnson to speak first, because he was full of his subject ; 
and immediately announced that the subject was " The Per- 
sonality of the Devil." We are all full of this subject to- 
day. You cannot touch an Ipswich man, or any man who 
has been in Ipswich to-day, wdio is not chock-full of two 
hundred and fifty years of the history of this ancient town. 
Every one who has spoken here to-day has said that the 
subject had been exhausted ; but they manifested, before 
they got through, that it had not been entirely exhausted. 



ADDRESS OF COL. LUTHER CALDWELL. 119 

We have exhausted the day, the dinner, ourselves, and, very 
nearly, the audience. 

Xovv I am to speak of our absent fellow-townsmen. Per- 
haps you will expect me to say something about Ipswich 
being a good place to emigrate from ; but I will not say that, 
because Ipswich is a good place to emigrate to, and a very 
desirable place to live in. "Young man, go West," said 
Horace Greeley ; but Mr. Greeley had never visited Ipswich, 
or he would have said, "Young man, go to Ipswich." It 
should be remembered that our fatliers Avho came to America 
were obliged to land on the coast : the rich lands of the in- 
terior were closed to them. On all the Atlantic coast, from 
Maine to Florida, there is no more pleasant or healthy place 
than Ipswich, nor one on the seashore line more fertile, or 
containing more natural beauties, or greater advantages. Mv. 
President, I know something of the coast from Maine to 
Florida ; I have been along its entire extent, and I know of 
no more beautiful place along the whole eastern coast of the 
United States than here. If our ancestors had sought for 
some place, if they had known as thoroughly as we know 
the Atlantic coast to-day, they could have entered no more 
beautiful harbor, tliey could have found no more fruitful 
fields, than you find here in old Ipswich. To those of us 
v/ho have wandered away, these attractions of the town are 
ever present in mind wherever we go. To those of you who 
have remained, and kept green the graves of our venerable 
sires, and cultivated the ancestral farms, Pope's words are 
appropriate : — 

" Happy the man whose wish and care 
A few paternal acres bound, 
Content to breathe his native air 
In his own ground. 

" Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
Whose flocks supply him with attire, 
Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
In winter, fire." 



120 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

Mr. President, this has been a red-letter day, indeed, for 
old Ipswich. Her sons have come from near and afar ; and 
friendly greetings between those long absent and separated, 
has been one of the marked features of this notable occas- 
ion. The town has been hardly able to hold all the thou- 
sands gathered within her fold. The decorations of both 
public and private buildings have been general and in good 
taste. The grand old elms which ornament the streets on 
every side, stretching out their broad-armed branches over 
our heads, as if invoking countless blessings thereon, stand 

like 

" Sentinels to guard enchanted land." 

The summer foliage of the trees and herbage never looked 
fairer and fresher; and the beauty of the town in all its 
parts, draped, and in its holiday attire, makes the visit of 
your absent sons a luxury and joy, and an event long to be 
remembered with just pride. Also especially to be com- 
mended was the soldierly bearing and military discipline of 
the veterans of " Grand Army " boys, whose appearance, with 
full ranks of the Ipswich and Essex posts, has been the 
proudest and most honorable feature of all the incidents of 
this great and brilliant celebration. In closing these brief 
remarks, permit me, in behalf of your absent sons, to thank 
and compliment you, Mr. President, the committee, and the 
people of this dear old town, on the success of this anniver- 
sary of its incorporation. 

The Toast-master. — We would like a further 
response from Rev. R. S. Rust. 

RESPONSE OF REV. R. S. RUST. 

Mr. President, — At this late hour I beg to be excused. 
I want to show that there is one descendant of Ipswich that 
is not an everlasting talking-machine. 



ADDRESS OF MR. FRANCIS R. APPLETON. 121 

The Toast-master. — We have another toast 
that surely is very apt. We have been talking 
about the virtues of the men of old Ipswich. It 
would be very ungallant in us not to remember that 
there were women in the olden time. Though they 
lived in log-cabins, and their hands handled the 
loom and the knitting-needle, and they dressed in 
homespun, they were ladies every inch. And though 
these sons of those old worthies may not inherit 
the olden virtues, certainly we may not say of the 
daughters of those olden ladies, that they are not 
their peers every whit. In response to this toast, 

" The Ladies of fyswich," 

we would be pleased to hear from Mr. Francis R. 
Appleton. 

All the adjacent seats on the platform being occu- 
pied by ladies, Mr. Appleton, on rising, assured the 
audience of a short speech, by calling attention to 
the fact that he was already in the midst of his sub- 
ject. Mr. Appleton then spoke as follows : — 

ADDRESS OF MR. FRANCIS E. APPLETON. 

Mr. PiiEsroENT, — When, in the course of events, a man 
finds himself about to pay his addresses to one lady in par- 
ticular, there is for him uncertainty and trepidation enough 
about it. Now, at your invitation, sir, I make bold to offer 
my lips to salute such an array of loveliness as my modesty 
never dreamed of. But who could be backward when the 
ladies of Ipswich summon him to arms ? This is a compli- 
cated and difficult question, — how to treat our girls ? It 
was in the endeavor to solve the problem of how to treat his 
girl, that a young man in a near town was filled with con- 



122 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

sternation and dismay at reading the words over a confec- 
tioner's door : " Ice-cream, one dollar per gal ! " 

I will not presume to draw a picture of any Ipswich ladies 
who, all about us to-day, have eulisted our hearts. However 
skilful my pencil, the features might not resemble the mini- 
ature each one of you men carries in his heart ; and the 
ladies themselves, in their dissatisfaction, might destroy the 
portrait and the artist besides. 

The general part of this interesting subject, Mr. President, 
I will leave to its own bewildering cloud of fascination and 
delusion, with the ancient remark, " If woman is a conun- 
drum we cannot guess, we will at least never give her up." 

It is to the daughters of Ipswich that I come to make my 
bow to-day, for myself, and for you, Mr. President, and for 
all of us. These are the jewels that old Ipswich bids us 
behold. Though I have admired them long, I have never 
been allowed to tell my love till now. It is impossible to 
look upon the women of Ipswich, who delight us to-day, 
without a thought — and that a most reverent one — of the 
honored women of the olden time. As I have listened to- 
day to accounts of the austere and sombre character of the 
Puritan fixtliers, I am reminded of the witty remark of Mr, 
Choate, himself a son of Ipswich, and whom we all miss 
here to-day, to the effect, that, in his opinion, the Puritan 
mothers deserve more consideration of us than the Puritan 
fathers, because they had to endure not only all the Puri- 
tan fathers had to endure, but they had to endure the Puri- 
tan fathers themselves. 

Tlie virtues of these Puritan mothers were great and high. 
How well have their descendants testified to that noble heri- 
tage ! On that shaft yonder are inscribed the names of dead 
heroes. Between and about the engraved roll there is an- 
other writing, — a record above the engraver's art to express. 
It is the devotion and sacrifice of the mothers, the wives, 
and sweethearts to whom those brave men belonged. 

Dame Ipswich is pre-eminently our mother to-day, as, 
clothed in her lasting beauty, she sits offering hospitality 



I 



LETTEK FEOM IPSWICH, ENGLAND. 123 

and welcome. Since her last birthday meeting, a genera- 
tion of sons and daughters has been born unto her, has 
looked upon her brown hills, walked her streets, and many 
of them passed out the other side. It is your high office, 
Mr. President, on this occasion, as on the former, to stand by 
the side of the old lady, and, acting as her chamberlain, to 
introduce her returning children. 1 atn sure you, in common 
with us all, wish that we might put our arms about her Great 
Neck, to show our filial love. 

As she grows weightier with years and importance, and, in 
the time to come, fairer and rounder with increasing and 
ever-honorable maternity, may God bless the fair women 
who become her daughters ! 

Band. — " The Girl I left behind Me." 

The Toast-master. — Our old mother is also a 
dutiful daughter, and she sent her respects to old 
Ipswich over the sea ; and a very pleasant response 
has come, in the shape of a letter from the Mayor of 
Ipswich, in which he says, — 



LETTER FROM THE MAYOR OF IPSWICH, ENGLAND. 

Ipswich, July 29, 1884. 
Dear Sir, — I regret it is not in my power to be present at 
the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the 
incorporation of the town of Ipswich, Mass., as my mayoralty 
duties entirely prevent my being absent from home for any long 
period during my year of office. I should have returned thanks 
for old Ipswich among some of the descendants of those who emi- 
grated from their native land in order that they might have free- 
dom to carry out their political and religious opinions, which was 
denied them in England. Being a descendant in a direct line 
from Philip Henry, I can fully symiDathize with your Puritan 
fathers, who endured persecution because they desired to carry out 
their own views ; and admire their adherence to those glorious 
principles which actuated Cromwell, Hampden, and that noble 



124 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

band who fought for their liberties, rather than bend and be 
trodden down by our Stuart kings. 

Wishing that your enterprising town may increase and prosper, 
and ever be celebrated for its civil and religious liberty, 
Yours faithfully, 

John May, 

Mayor of Ipswich, England. 
John Heard, Esq., of the Committee of Arrangements. 

To-day has brought us a cablegram from the cor- 
poration of Ipswich as follows : — 

TELEGRAM FROM IPSWICH, ENGLAND, 

[Received at 9.27 a.m., Aug. 16, 1884.] 

Aug. 15, 1884. 
The Corporation of Ipswich, England, send their hearty congratu- 
lations to the Corporation of Ipswich, Mass., on the celebration of 
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of their incorporation, 
and wish them continued prosperity. 

Mayor of Ipswich, England. 

May I ask the band to play " God save the 
Queen" ? 

The band played " God save the Queen." 

The Toast-master. — We come now to the last 
toast on this occasion, which is, 

'' The Survivors of the Last Celebration, 1834." 

I invite a response from one of those who partici- 
pated in that celebration, the Hon. S. H. Phillips. 

ADDRESS OF HON. S. H. PHILLIPS. 

Mr. PREsmENT, — I must say it is not very exhilarating, 
when the lengthening shadows of evening remind ns of the 
close of the day, to be called upon to play the part of an old 



ADDRESS OF HON. S. H. PHILLIPS. 125 

man. As I remember matters fifty years ago, the people 
whom we were called upon to stand aside for were the sur- 
viving soldiers of the Ee volution, — those decrepit old men 
who were handed into carriages, and who held canes in their 
hands as they tottered towards them. Well, now, I hope I 
have not quite come to that. But, Mr. President, I think 
I have a right to say, if you will call upon me as a veteran, 
that I am only a veteran by brevet : I am not a veteran in 
the line of commission at all. I have "ot some crood fiuht in 
me yet. And yet it is literally true, and just exactly and 
only literally true, that I was present at your celebration 
fifty years ago. It came about in the most natural way in 
the world. I remember one evening old Mr. John White 
Treadwell, a native of Ipswich, and an old friend of my 
father, came into my father's house and said, " You must all 
go to the Ipswich celebration this year. Have n't you got 
anything to do with Ipswich ? " — " Yes," said my father : 
" ray mother is a descendant of an Ipswich family." [She 
was a descendant of the Simple Cobbler of Agawani ; but I 
didn't know that then.] "But," said Mr. Treadwell, "you 
must go." They decided to go. Like an impertinent little 
fellow, I said, " Can't I go too ? " I felt as innocent and 
unsophisticated as Oliver Twist when he asked for more. 
" What in the world can we do with you ? " said my honored 
parent. " Well, I guess I can go." — " No," said my father : 
" you will be terribly in the way." Then my old grand- 
mother chimed in, and said, " Perhaps that boy, if he wants 
to go so much, ought to have a chance. You ought to give 
him an opportunity to go. What he sees he will remember, 
and perhaps he will tell about it twenty or thirty years 
hence." So they gave in, these two old gentlemen : they 
could not stand my grandmother's real Ipswich spirit. She 
was an Appleton, and proud of her Ipswich descent. I inter- 
jected that the celebration would occur on my birthday, 
and by teasing I got a chance to come to Ipswich. Well, 
the day came around, and early in the morning we started 
off for Ipswich. There were no railroads in those days : at 



126 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

any rate, none in Essex County, — no railroad at all, — and 
we made the journey from Salem to Ipswich in a one-horse 
chaise. We got to Ipswich. It was not such a gala-day as 
we celebrate to-day, and yet we felt pretty grand. And 
what did I especially notice everywhere as I looked around ? 
Salem men — Salem men here, and Salem men there. I 
may call names now, because it was a good while ago, — Mr. 
William Lummus, and then old Mr. Jesse Smith the watch- 
maker. Said I to my father, " Do all the Salem people live 
in Ipswich ?" — " No," he replied ; " but most of the Ipswich 
people go to Salem." I have two old gentlemen in mind 
now. There is one of them [pointing to Mr. Jeremiah S. 
Perkins] : they have been sitting opposite me at tlie table. 
They were old men fifty years ago. They are the kind of 
old men you want to bring up. Fifty years ago that was an 
old man. He used to make my clothes, I believe. 

Mr. Perkins. — Yes, sir. 

Mr. Phillips. — "Vy^l^j those were the men that we found 
here. 

I will try to tell you a little more about that celebration, 
if I can remember it with exactness. My grandmother told 
me to remember it twenty or thirty years. We got into the 
procession. I never was in one before in my life. I thought 
it almost too ridiculous for anything. One kind young 
gentleman, however, took me by the liand and said, " You 
can walk in right behind the old folks." There I saw tlie 
chief marshal of the day, Colonel Miller, a gentleman I 
remember seeing about Salem when he was an officer of the 
Salem Cadets. I remember him by the red coat he wore 
when he trained : I don't remember much except that. He 
was the chief marshal of the day. I got into the church. 
Another young gentleman, I don't know who it was, took 
me by the hand and led me in. I had not been in the 
church long, before the services commenced. It was an old- 
fashioned church, \vith square pews with little railings on 
top. Before long, crack, crack, went the galleries ! I never 
knew such a commotion. Everybody jumped. What they 



ADDEESS OF HON. S. H. PHILLIPS. 127 

were jumping for I didn't know ; but I feel very sure I did 
some of the jumping myself, for I found myself in a little 
pew, witli an old Iievolutionary soldier sitting -at my side. 
He said, " My little friend, what would n't I give if I were 
as nimble as you are ! I wish I could go over a' pew-rail as 
quick as you." Then I heard somebody calling out terribly 
for Colonel KimbalL I did n't know what Colonel Kimball 
liad to do with it ; but I remember that pretty 'sdou Mr. J. 
Choate Kimball cume along, and they brought in two great 
pieces of joist, and caused them to be placed up under the 
gallery to shore it up. Then, after it was all comfortable, 
Colonel Kimball, I fancy it was, or some such man, got up, 
and said the gallery was perfectly safe, and there was no 
danger, and we sat down and tried to be calm ; for even all 
the ecclesiastical learning of Dr. Dana, and the astounding 
eloquence of Mr. Choate, were not enough to keep us quiet 
in the excitement. I stood it as well as I could. I had seen 
Mr. Choate in Salem before that. I thought he was a most 
extraordinary man. What glossy curly black hair he had ! 
How he curled up his lower lip ! How he pounded that old 
pulpit ! He was an energetic speaker, I can tell you. Well, 
I listened and listened, and I did wish it would end. I 
thought I would never go to another Ipswich celebration as 
long as I lived. But still I suppose it was all very fine. 
Everybody else said it was, and so I suppose it was. Well, 
the thing ended finally, and then we went out. 

Then there was to be a dinner. The dinner was laid 
somewhere about where this tent is pitched now ; but every- 
thing was on a smaller scale. When I got out there, my 
much respected parent showed by strong signs that he wished 
that little boy of his had staid at home ; for, of all the 
elephants on a small scale, he was about the Avorst — always 
in the way, always asking questions. "Little folks should be 
seen, and not heard." I perceived that he wished I was at 
home : still I fought my way. I meant to see the celebration 
out, and I did. My father rather excused himself from going 
to the dinner at all. He could not go because he had got to 



128 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

take care of me. Then old Judge Cnmmings, — don't any of 
you remember Judge Cummings ? [A voice, "Yes, sir."] — a 
man of most benign appearance, a man who alwaj's had a care 
for little boys, — he came up and patted me on the head, and 
said, "I think the boy ought to have a chance too." 1 looked 
at him with wonder, aduiiration, love, and praise. I never 
saw a man I admired as much in my life as I did that man. 
I was going to get something to eat. He had a very old- 
fa.sliioned look, a commanding figure, curl}^ brown hair, an 
immense frill to his shirt, and a very grand and aiiy ap- 
pearance in every w^ay. He took me by one hand, and my 
respected parent took me by the other, and in we went and 
sat down to dinner. I suppose it was first-rate. I suppose 
it tasted about as well to me as it would have done to Lieu- 
tenant Greely's poor Arctic voyagers. It seemed to me to be 
the grandest dinner I ever had in my life, I ate ever3'thing 
that was in front of me. I particularly remember old Mr. 
Lord, your much respected Eegister of Probate down here so 
many years. He presided. He had tlien a niost venerable 
aspect : I believe he was always that kind of a man, and 
always looked venerable. He produced some pears, and gave 
us a history of the old pear-tree on wdiich they grew. I wish 
I had some of the pears now. But we got through with the 
dinner. I had never been to a public dinner before, and I 
didn't know what they were made of, or what people had to 
eat. I supposed everybody was as hungry as I was, and was 
expected to eat as much as I did. But " the feast of reason 
and the flow of soul" was something I did not appreciate until 
much later in life. This " feast of reason and the flow of soul" 
began ; and old men whose names have passed away, wliose 
faces are lost sight of, but whose memory lives in the grate- 
ful affections of the people of this county, got up one after 
another, and spoke about old times. I remember ]\Ir. Sal- 
tonstall, not our friend liere to-day, but his distinguished 
father, — I remember how he spoke with earnestness and 
clearness, looking right out at the end of the tent where a 
cloth was pinned on with the inscription : " In General Court, 



ADDRESS OF HON. S. H. PniLLIPS. 129 

August 5, 1634 (old style), Voted that Agawam be called 
Ipswich." " That," Mr. Saltonstall said, " is commonplace 
enough, and yet, after all, it was the day of the foundation 
of a town as distiuguished and as worthy in New England 
annals as any town in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 
I remember distinctly Mr. Saltonstall's allusion to that. Two 
or three others spoke. Finally Mr. Choate spoke. I remember 
the Salem people : I do not remember those that were not 
Salem people. At last Mr. Choate got going again. Well, I 
thought, if he were not the queerest man ! I have seen him a 
good deal since; but he did seem to me then the queerest man 
I ever put eyes on. I never heard a man that could roll off 
the words as fast as he did and tell such stories. He told 
one story (one gentleman here says my father told it; but 
he did not) — I remember some story of this kind, of the 
old worthies, old Puritan worthies. An old man had been 
taunting a minister (perhaps it was old Ward, the Simple 
Cobbler of Agawam), an energetic old minister of the day, 
because things did n't go very well with him. Finally they 
got mixed up in a wrestling-match, and the minister threw 
the old man over the fence. I said, "Did they have such 
ministers in those days?" — "Well," Judge Cummings said, 
" they had different ministers in those days, and, if you ever 
come here to another centennial, you will find that the people 
that you meet here another day will be a good deal different 
from what we are." I believe it has been said here to-day 
that Governor Winthrop came here on one occasion " to exer- 
cise by way of prophecy." Judge Cummings must have been 
exercising himself " by way of prophecy " on that occasion. 
It seems as if he had spoken the truth, as I look back to-day 
upon all which has occurred. How much food there is for 
reflection for all of us ! How much has come to pass within 
a few years ! and within fifty years how very much ! 

I said, when I began, that there was no railroad at the time 
we first came to Ipswich. There was a railroad partly opened 
between Boston and Newton, on the road to Worcester. In 
the course of that dinner it was the subject of conversation as 

9 



130 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

one of the current events of the day. The gentlemen around 
us talked about it as an occasion of some importance ; but 
they came to the conclusion that the railroad would not come 
to much. It would be pretty hard to make a railroad which 
would be self-sustaining ; and in this country, at least, to say 
nothing of England, the idea of making a railroad profitable 
was absolutely out of the question. 

So much for the wisdom of the great men of those -days. 
Why, I think tliat if the worthy fathers of the County of 
Essex could revisit this world once more, and take part in 
the festivities of this occasion, and consider the events which 
are transpiring all around us, they would pause in solemn 
av/e wliile they contemplated the growth of this country, the 
development of its material w^ealth, the marvellous achieve- 
ments in science, the enlargement of human liberty every- 
where, and the general advancement of the human race. In 
view of the solemnity of this occasion, looking forward to the 
distant future for what may transpire hereafter, with a deep 
feeling of reverence for the past, and an all-abiding faith in 
the all-hail hereafter, let us leave it to those who may speak 
in this place fifty years hence to delineate the next chapter in 
the progress of Ipswich. 

TELEGRAM TO IPSWICH, ENGLAND. 

Mr. Sayward. — It has been suggested that a re- 
sponse should be made by this assembly to the tele- 
gram which has been received from England, and 
Mr. Heard proposes this : — 

Aug. 16, 1884. 
To the Mayor of Ipswich, England. 

The town of Ipswich, celebrating its two hundred and fiftieth 

anniversary, sends thanks to Mother Ipswich for her kindly 

greeting, and best wishes for her continued prosperity. 

The telegram was accepted by the audience. 



CLOSING EXERCISE. 131 



CLOSING EXEECISE. 

The Toast-mastee. — We will now close our fes- 
tivities by a selection from the band: "Aiild Lang 
Syne." 

The band played "Auld Lang Syne," and, while 
the audience was separating, played a march. 



SELECTIONS FROM CORRESPONDENCE. 



Augusta, Me., Aug. 12, 1884. 
Mr. Sayward, Chairman of the Committee of luvitation. 

Dear Sir, — It is -witli sincere regret that I find myself unable 
to be present at the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth 
anniversary of the settlement of Ipswich. 

Personally I liave the most agreeable associations with your town, 
and b}' marriage I have a right to sit at your board. My children 
inherit the blood of two families who were among the original 
colonists that pitched their tents at Ipswich. 

With such ample reason for deep interest in your town, I need 
not assure you of the great pleasure it would give me to join in 
your celebration, if my engagements would permit me to leave 

Maine at this time. 

Very sincerely, 

James G. Blaine. 



Department of the Interior, 
Pension Office, Washington, D.C, Aug. 7, 1884. 

George E. Farley, Esq., Secretary, etc., Ipswich, Mass. 

Dear Sir, — I have your invitation of the 29th of July to 
attend the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
of tlie incorporation of the town of Ipswich, and regret very much 
my inability to be with you. I regret it the more, as my maternal 
grandfather, jSTathaniel Wade, is identified with the early history of 
the place, having resided there during and prior to the Eevolution- 
ary "War, in which he took a prominent part. He was, I believe, 
a minute-man at Bunker Hill, and afterwards served as eolouel or 



134 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

lieutenant-colonel on the staff of one of the general officers, and 
was at one time, I think, temporarily in command of West Point, 
after the desertion of Arnold. 

I am at present quite ill, being confined to my Led, with no 
prospect of being able to be out for some days yet. 

While I deeply regret that I shall not be able to be present at 
your anniversary, I desire to thank you heartily for your courtesy 
in extending to mc the invitation. 

Very truly yours, 

W. W. Dudley. 



Boston, 91 Boylston Street, July 18, 1884. 
George E. Faklet, Esq., Secretar)-, etc. 

Dear Sir, — I have received your kind invitation to be present 
as the guest of the town of Ipswich, on the two hundred and 
fiftieth anniversary of its incorporation. 

I beg to assure you of my sincere regret that I shall not be able 
to be present on that signal day. 

Ipswich was an important centre for a long time after the Eng- 
lish plantation of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay was begun, and 
in it have originated, and from it have gone forth, many of our most 
respected and distinguished families. AVhile they are widely scat- 
tered, and some of them are citizens of nearly every State in the 
Union, they all remember with an uplifting pride the home of their 
fathers. I feel myself honored in being able to trace back my line- 
age to an ancestor seven generations removed, who was among the 
planters of your ancient town as early as 1G37. 

The observance which you propose will, I am sure, awaken whole- 
some sympathies in thousands of hearts, evoke numberless interest- 
ing events all along the line of these two centuries and a half, and 
re-erabalm them in more fixed and permanent form. 

Trusting that your celebration may in every way meet your best 
anticipations, 

I am very truly yours, 

Edmund F. Slafteb. 



SELECTIONS FEOM CORRESPONDENCE. 135 

AsuLAND, Mass., July 23, 1834. 
Mr. George E. Farley. 

Dear Sib, — I regret very mucli that we cannot accept the 
courteous invitation to attend the two hundred and fiftieth anni- 
versary of the settlement of Ipswich. Absence from the State at 
the time set for it will prevent what would otherwise have proved 
a great pleasure. 

A pastorate of seven years over the First Church of Ipswich put 
me into familiar thought of the long line of Christian worthies 
who had preceded me in lay and pastoral connection with that 
church. Often, in imagination, I Avas visited by the energetic 
Parker, who came Avith his hundred parishioners to settle in the 
depths of the wilderness ; by the witty " Simple Cobbler," who 
knew how to mend the laws of the body politic as well as his 
sermons ; by the saintly Norton ; by the four liogcrses and the 
learned AVilliam Hubbard, as well as by others of the sixteen able 
and godly ministers of Christ who had gone before me in that 
field of labor. Tlie recollection of these men was to me a strong 
support, as well as a stimulus to cultivate with equal fidelity the 
vineyard which they had planted with so much care and zeal. 

If the spirits of the blest are permitted to visit the scene of their 
earthly labors, I do not doubt that these ancestral forms will hover 
over their descendants of the two hundred and fiftieth yea.v, as they 
review the events of the past, and join with them in fervent sup- 
plication that the blessings of pure religion and intellectual culture 
which have come down from the former generations may continue 
in the good old town of Ipswich as long as the world endures. 

That the old Mother, green and vigorous after two centuries and 
a half, may for many more centuries pour forth her colonies and 
her progeny to bless mankind, is the hearty wish of 

Yours very respectfully, 

Thomas Morong. 



NEWBrrRYPORT, Aug. 16, 1884. 
Messrs. Sayward, Chairman, and Farley, Secretaiy, of the Committee. 

Dear Sirs, — Had I anticipated your kind invitation to be 
present at the celebration in Ipswich, I should have hastened my 



136 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

journey liitlierward a day, M-liere I have arrived after the celebra- 
tion is over. 

Next to Old Newbury, where I was born, and with a similar 
aflfection, I regard the ancient Agawam, where my ancestors since 
1654 have lived and died, and in whose soil they are buried. It 
was by no choice of mine that the long line of succession in the 
ancient home of our family has been interrupted, and I am obliged 
to be merely a grandson of Ipswich, Here my father came in his 
boyhood to seek his fortune, and, in obedience to the same law of 
dispersion, his boys have scattered from their birthplace ; and it 
is only the memory of the past, and of the good people who have 
gone before us, which draws us back to Newburyport and to 
Ipswich. 

In other parts of the world I have always been glad to say tliat 
I, and my ancestors before me for almost two centuries and a half, 
hailed from this happy corner of Massachusetts between the Ipswich 
and the INIerrimack, whose shore has charms beyond all shores 
besides. Here I hope to be brought for burial. Here a good 
Providence conducted our fathers to settle, and out from tliis old 
cradle goes good blood to mingle with new generations which are 
blessing the world. Never can the descendants who trace their 
lineage back to the humble folk who first settled under the shadow 
of the hills of Agawam (still so beautiful), and by the side of its 
gentle river, forget the old home of their race. 

I must repeat my extreme regret that I have not been present 
with you to-day to enjoy all the happy memories and happy influ- 
ences which make such days delightful to such as clierish reverence 
for their ancestors, and see in the settlement of such towns as 
Ipswich the seeds of great and noble history. Well do I remember 
when Eufus Choate touched the strings of his marvellous eloquence 
at the commemoration fifty years ago, and often have I read his 
discourse as one of the most remarkable commemorative discourses 
of that time, I can only hope that some descendant of mine lifty 
years from now may find on your tliree hundredth anniversary a 
pleasure which I have missed to-day. With thanks to the Com- 
mittee for the courtesy of their invitation, 

I am very truly yours, 

S. L. Caldwell, 



SELECTIONS FROM CORRESPONDENCE. 137 

BosTOX, Aug. 13, 1884. 
C. A. Sayward, Esq., Chairman, etc. 

Sir, — I trust my engagements may permit my attending the two 
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town 
of Ipswich ; but there is some uncertainty. The incidents of your 
town life are more than interesting to those who can trace the blood 
of the early worthies in their veins ; and on such an occasion I may 
be permitted to recall, that, through the intermarriage of my ances- 
tors, I am one of the representatives of the early Ipswich families of 
Perkins and Rogers, and my sympathies are with you. 

Tliere was historic incident in Ipswich before the settlement 
under the Bay Charter. As an integral part of " Mariana," it was 
included in the grant by " the President & Councel of New Eng- 
land " to Captain Ji^hn Mason " inhabitant of the City of London," 
March 9, 1622-23, and also had some particular description in the 
recital, "together with the Great Isle or Island henceforth to be 
called Isle Mason, lying near or before the Bay harbor or ye river 
of Aggawam," etc. 

In the swamp here, in 1623, was the fight related by Phineas 
Pratt, in which the Piscataqua and Mr. Weston's men attacked 
the Abordees, and avenged their ill conduct at Wessagusicus, and 
in plundering Mr. Weston near the Merrimack. Here was one of 
the habitations of Masconomah, chief of the tribe located in these 
parts, and here he planned and sought the alliance of the Cape Ann 
settlers, and after their removal, with the pioneers at Nahumkcag, 
for defence against the predatory incursions of the Taranteens. 
The Bay Company when organized became the successor of " the 
old planters " to these alliances, and continued the humane and 
kindly protection its predecessors had given to this broken tribe, 
whose original power and numbers had been wasted and shrunk 
before the cruel pestilence which in 1618 had ravished the coast 
from Saco to Plymouth. Your shores were attractive to European 
settlement both for the superb winter fishery, the river schooling 
fish, and the flights of sea and marsh fowl in their season. The 
liberal fertility of its broad meadows and marshes gave security 
for the wintering of cattle, and one naturally inquires why was it 
not settled earlier. Surely its advantages were known ; but the 
Spanish and French wars had been detrimental to private enter- 
prise, and Parliament had by no means been up to the importance 



138 THE TOWN OF irswiCH. 

of occupying these shores. Had the lamented Cliarles W. Tuttle 
lived to have completed his life of Captain Mason, for which he 
had so laboriously prepared, or when the Prince Society shall col- 
late and publish the material which he left, it is probable we shall 
know more concerning this history of Mariana, prior to the Bay 
Charter. 

Your town was organized at a time when the Bay Company 
had shaped the skeleton of what we still call tlie township substan- 
tially to its present form, carrying self-govennnent, elective offi- 
cials, property in the soil free from landlordism, to its chartered 
inhabitants, and making each townsliip independent in its sphere, 
and self-reliant for its prosperity. The men thus oi-ganized in 
Ipswich were marked by energy, industry, enterprise, and practical 
forethought. Their manliness gave tone to their church and to their 
high moral principles. The reserve of prudence, tlie simple habits 
and self-abnegation which characterized them, were necessary to 
success in planting a settlement on the frontier of an ocean-bound 
continent alive with a brave and jealous hostile race. It was what 
these early generations of our race sowed here in the loneliness of 
frontier life, enduring toil, privation, poverty, danger, and the heart- 
separation of emigration, that in this century bears its rich fruits in 
character, civilization, culture, liberty, and prosperity, and has given 
us a land, abounding in population and national wealth. 

For one, I am profoundly grateful to these your ancestors who 
made good their footing on this continent, and 1 respect and esteem 
their spinning-wheels, their hoes, their axes, their whale-boats and 
fishing-gear, their log-cabins, their homespun clothes, their shot- 
guns, and their pious confidence that the God of Israel would not 
forsake them in their hour of need, as the emblems of that nobility 
of labor, merit, and character, which has made this continent to-day 
the home of fifty-five millions of the Gothic race they sprang from. 

I am very respectfully your obedient servant, 

Chas. Levi "Woodbury. 



LIST OF INVITED GUESTS. 



Abbott, A. A Salem. 

Advertiser, Editor Boston Daily Boston. 

Allen, Charles ,, 

Allen, William Nortliampton. 

Allen, Charles II Lowell. 

Ames, Oliver . Boston. 

Amory, Thomas C „ 

Angier, M. B. . . Newburyport. 

Angier, Mrs. M. B „ 

Appleton, John Bangor, Me. 

Appleton, Nathan Boston. 

Appleton, W. II. . . New York. 

Appleton, W. S Boston. 

Appleton, Elisiia Providence, K,.I. 

At WOOD, Julius W Ipswich. 

Bancroft, George . Newport, E.I. 

Billings, John D Camhridge. 

Bishop, E. li Haverliill. 

Blaine, J. G Augusta, Me. 

Elaine, Mrs. J. G „ „ 

Blake, E. A Port Chester, N.Y. 

Blake, Mrs. E. A „ „ „ 

Boynton, Horace E Boston. 

Briggs, Edward li Ipswich. 

Brooks, Phillips Boston. 

Brookfield, Selectmen op Brookfield. 

Bruce, George A Somerville. 

BuRRiLL, I. F Boston. 

BuRRiLL, Mrs. I. E „ 

Butler, B. F Lowell. 

Caldwell, Charles A Alton, 111. 

Caldwell, William Augusta, Me. 



140 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

Caldwell, Lutheb, Elinira, N.Y. 

Caldwell, Mks. Luther „ „ 

Caldwell, Augustine Worcester. 

Caldwell, S. L Pouglikecpsie. 

Caldwell, Joseph H New Yurk. 

Choate, George F Salem. 

CoLBURN, Waldo Dcdiiam. 

Colby, George J. L Ncwburyport. 

CowLES, J. P Ipswich. 

CowLEs, Mrs. J. r „ 

Cross, George Exeter, N.II. 

Cross, Mks. George „ „ 

Currier, Edward E Maiden. 

CusniNG, Stephen Boston. 

CusiiiNG, Mus. Stephen „ 

CuTLKR, Temple Essex. 

Cutler, Mrs. Temple ,, 

Dadmun, J. W Wintlirop. 

Dadmun, Mrs. J. W „ 

Daltox, S Salem. 

Devens, Charles Worcester. 

Dexter, Henry M Boston. 

UoDGE, Mary A Hamilton. 

Dodge, II. Augusta „ 

Dudley, W. W Wasliingt(m, D.C. 

Dyer, E.\nnie J Boston. 

Eastman, C. L Chelsea. 

Eliot, Charles W Cambridge. 

Endicott, W. C Salem. 

Essex, Selectmen of Essex. 

Farley, Gustavus Cambridge. 

Farley, Eobert Boston. 

Field, Walbridge A ,, 

Flagg, George A Maiden. 

Flichtner, G. F New York. 

Fuller, Enoch Salem. 

Gazette, Salem, Editor of >. 

Gilbert, Edward II Ware. 

Goodell, Abner C Salem. 

Globe, Boston Daily, Editor of Boston. 

Gray, Horace Washington, D.C. 

Grand Army Republic, Essex Post .... Essex. 

Greenougu, William S Wakefield. 

Hamilton, Selectmen of Hamilton. 



INVITED GUESTS. 141 

Hannaford, J. L Melrose. 

Hannaford, Mrs. J. L „ 

Hannaford, C. II SaxouviUc. 

Hannaford, Mrs. C II „ 

Hazen, H. a Boston. 

Heard, J. T 

Herald, Boston, Editor op ,, \ 

Herrick, a. F Newton Upper Falls. 

Herrick, Mrs A. F ,, ,, „ 

High, W. C Somcrvlllc. 

High, Mrs. W. C 

Hill, Mayor of Salem Sniciii. 

Holmes, Oliver Wlndell Boston. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr ,, 

Holt, Alfred F Cainl)ridge. 

HoYT, A. H ■ . Boston. 

HoRTON, N Salem. 

Hubbard, D. B Grafton. 

Hubbard, Mrs. D. B ,, 

Hubbard, CD Wheeling, West Va. 

Ipswich, England, Mayor of 

Johnson, Charles T IpsM'ich. 

Johnson, Mrs. Charles T „ 

Journal, Boston, Editor of Boston. 

KiDNER, Reuben » 

Kidner, Mrs. Reuben „ 

Kimball, Otis >» 

Kimball, Benj.^min „ 

Kimball, Arthur S Oberliu, Ohio. 

Kimball, John C Hartfortl, Conn. 

Kimball, Mrs. John C „ „ 

Kimball, Daniel Woburn. 

Knowles, J. Worcester. 

Knowles, Mrs. J. ,, 

L.AWRENCE, Amos A Boston. 

Leeds, George Baltimore, Md. 

LoRiNG, George B Salem. 

Lord, George R. ,, 

Lord, Enoch >, 

Lord, George D Boston. 

LuNT, George Newburyport. 

Manning, K li New York. 

Manning, Mrs. R. H »i „ 

Manning, Joseph E Boston. 



142 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

Harden, Geouge A Lowell. 

Metcalf, Edwin D Springfield. 

Merrill, C. A Wiuclieudon. 

Miller, J. N U. S. Navy. 

Miller, Mrs. J. N 

MoRONG, Thomas Aslilaud. 

MoRONG, Mrs. Tkomas „ 

Morton, Marcus Audovcr. 

Morris, Franklin Northampton. 

Morris, Mrs. Franklin „ 

Nettleton, Edward P Boston. 

Newton, B. F St. Louis, Mo. 

Observer, Salem, Editor op Salem. 

Oliver, Henry K „ 

Patch, George F Ipswicli 

Palmer, Edwin B „ 

Palmer, Mrs. E. B „ 

Perkins, Augustus T Boston. 

Perkins, J. S Salem. 

Perkins, Aaron „ 

Perkins, A. H „ 

Peabody, Ezekiel Ipswicli. 

Phillips, S. H Salem. 

Phillips, Mrs. S. H „ 

Phillips, Willard P „ 

Pike, John Rowley. 

Pike, Mrs. John „ 

Pierce, Henry B . Boston. 

Poore, Ben : Perley Newbury. 

Porter, E. G Lexington, 

Post, Boston, Editor op Boston. 

Potter, Daniel Salem. 

PuLsiFER, Joseph ,, 

PuLsiPER, Daniel Boston. 

Raymond, J. C Beverly. 

E-INDGE, Mrs. S. B Cambridge. 

Robinson, George D Boston. 

Rockwell, Horace F ,, 

Rogers, J. C Dauvers. 

Rogers, Mrs. J. C ,, 

Rogers, W. C Boston. 

Rogers, R. D Danvers. 

Rowley, Selectmen op Rowley. 

Rust, R. S Cincinnati, Ohio. 



INVITED GUESTS. 14^ 

RiTssELL, Edwakd J Worcester. 

Safford, N. S Newton. 

Saffokd, Daniel E Hamilton. 

Saltonstall, Levekett Chestnut Hill. 

Saltonstall, Henry Boston. 

Saltonstall, "W. G „ 

Sheridan, P. H Washington, D.C. 

Sherman, Edgar J Gloucester. 

SiLSBEE, B. H Salem. 

Slade, Daniel Denison Chestnut Hill. 

Slade, Mrs. D. D 

Slafter, Edmund E Boston. 

Smith, Roland C Ipswich. 

Smith, C. N Peabody. 

Smith, Mrs. C. N 

Smith, E. A Somerville. 

Smith, Mrs. E. A „ 

Smith, Thomas Ipswich. 

Southgate, Charles M Dedham. 

Spofford, R. H Newburyport. 

Spofford, Mrs. R. H „ 

Spofford, Uriah G Appletou, Wis. 

Stone, Eben E Newburyport. 

Thayer, N. R Newtonville. 

Thayer, Mrs. N. R „ 

ToPSFiELD, Selectmen of Topsfield. • 

Traveller, Boston, Editor of Boston. 

Transcript, Boston Evening, Editor of . . . „ 

Treadwell, Mrs. Daniel Cambridge. 

Wade, Samuel Alton, 111. 

Wagner, Jesse Hyde Park. 

Wagner, Mrs. Jesse „ 

Wainwright, Henry C Boston. 

Wainwright, William Weymouth. 

Warner, C. H Boston. 

Waters, T. Erank Ipswich. 

Waters, Mrs. T. Erank „ 

Wheatland, Henry Salem. 

Whittier, John G Amesbury. 

Whittakee, George Somerville. 

Whittaker, Mrs. George „ 

Whipple, John J Brockton. 

Wilder, Marshall P Boston. 

Wildes, George D New York. 



144 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 

WiNTHROP, Egbert C Boston. 

WiNCHENDON, Selectjien OF Wiiiclieudou. 

Wise, Daniel Euglewood, NJ. 

Wise, Mrs. Daniel „ ,, 

Woods, Joseph W Boston. 

Woods, Mrs. Joseph W „ 

Woodbury, Charles Levi „ 

Woods, Pred Springfield. 

Woods, Mrs. Fred „ 



THE CHOIR 

UNDETl THE DIHECTION OF PROF. ARTHUR S. KIMBALL. 



Mrs. M. H. HALE . . 
Prof. EBEN H. BAILEY 



Pianist. 
Organist. 



Soloists. 

Miss GERTIE BLAKE. Miss LAURA HUBBARD. 

Mrs. WILLIAM H. HUBBARD. 



Cliorus Singers. 


Mrs. W. G. Brown. 


Miss Emma Nason. 


Mrs. E. H. Bailey. 


Miss Hattie Ordway. 


Miss Nellie Butterworth. 


Miss Nellie Rigby. 


Miss Lizzie Butxerwortii. 


Mrs. a. H. Spiller. 


Miss Annie Brown. 


Miss Cora Sanborn. 


Mrs. Everett Brown. 


Miss Lucy Stone. 


Mrs. Elias Conant. 


Miss Nellie Trask. 


Miss Lillie Carnes. 


Miss Annie Wade. 


Mrs. N. Clark. 


Mr. George Adams. 


Mrs. C. H. Cummings. 


Mr. Everett Brown. 


Miss Mabel Downes. 


Mr. Elias Conant. 


Miss Sadie Dudley. 


Mr. Fred. Cross. 


Miss Mary Fowler. 


Mr. Reuben Daniels. 


Miss Jennie Gillan. 


Mr. Martin Eiirlacher 


Miss Sarah Harris. 


Mr. William Goodhue. 


Mrs. Carrie Horton. 


Mr. Increase Horton. 


Miss Stella Haas, 


Mr. Arthur Hale. 


Mrs. Angie Harris. 


Mr. William Horton. 


Miss Lizzie Heard. 


Mr. David Kimball. 


Miss Lorinda Harris. 


Mr. Charles H. Noyes. 


Mrs. Addie Kennedy. 


Mr. William Nichols. 


Mrs. Kate Lord. 


Mr. Joseph Ross. 


Mrs. Carrie Lord. 


Mr. Fred. Ross. 


Miss Abby Lord. 


Mr. George Spencer. 


Miss Mary Mee. 


Mr. Clifton Willcomb. 


Miss Ella Newman. 


Rev. T. Frank Waters. 


Miss Alice Newman. 





10 



DESCRIPTION OF HELIOTYPES- 



THE HOWARD HOUSE. 

Page 67. 

The original house was probably built by Tliomas Emerson, before 
1648. William Howard purchased the premises about 1679, and 
built an addition to the house about 1709. 



MEETING-HOUSES. 
Page 80. 

The first meeting-house of the First Parish and of the town was 
probably built in 1634. It stood until 1645, when the second house 
of worship was erected, and used until Jan. 16, 1701, when the 
last sermon was preached in it. The third meeting-house was 
built during the years 1699 and 1700. The first sermon was 
preached in it Jan. 29, 1701. This building stood until 1749, 
when the fourth house was built, a picture of which appears here. 
This was taken down in 1846, and the present meeting-house was 
erected that year. 

The first house of worship of the South Parish was erected in 
1747, and was in use tiU 1838, when the present meeting-house 
was erected. 



148 THE TOWN OF IPSWICH. 



KEY. THOMAS COBBETT'S HOUSE. 

Page 118. 

This house, on East Street, was built by Thomas Firman in 1634, 
who sold it in 1638 to Rev. John Norton. Mr. Norton sold it to 
Mr. Cobbett, who was in Ipswich as early as 1656. Mr. Norton's 
will, dated Jan. 14, 1661, gives "his brother William Norton the 
hundred pounds due unto him for his house in Ipswich, which 
Mr. Cobbett now dwelleth in, and the land he bought of Mathew 
Whipple, deceased, now in the occupation of Goodman Annable." 

Mr. Cobbett, in his will, gives to his wife Elizabeth " my dwell- 
ing-house in Ipswich, confirmed lately to be my own by Mr. Wil- 
liam Norton, inipowered thereto by his brother, Mr. John Norton, 
his will." 



THE DODGE HOUSE. 
Page 118. 



This house, which stands on the corner of North Main and Sum- 
mer Streets, was probably built by Thomas Firman about 1640. 



CHOATE BRIDGE, BUILT 1764. 

Page 148. 

Lines composed by Mr. Clark, a blind man (of Rowley) in 1764, 
and recited by him on the bridge, in the presence of Colonel 
Choate and several other persons, before the ground walls were 
done, although the bridge Avas so far finished as to be passable. 
Among the spectators was Nathaniel Dutch, then a lad, who heard 
the verses recited, and repeated them from memory, December, 



DESCEIPTION OF HELIOTYPES. 149 

1831, previous to which time it is not known that they were ever 
penned or printed. 

Behold this bridge of lime and stone ! 
The like before was never known 
For beauty and magnificence, 
Considering the small expense. 

How it excels what was expected. 
Upon the day it was projected ! 
Wlien faithful men are put in trust. 
They '11 not let all the money rust. 

But some advance for public good 
Is by this fabric understood ; 
And after this it will be wrote 
In honor of brave Colonel Choate. 

It was his wisdom built the same, 
And added lustre to his fame, 
That filled this county with renown. 
And did with honor Ipswich crown. 



University Press : Joliu "Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 



p 



